
Class _IIia.l_ 

Book ._S_A1. 

GoipghtN^ 

CDE^fRIGHT DEPOSm 



INVALID EUROPE 

Some Impressions of Recent Travel 



INVALID EUROPE 

Some Impressions of Recent Travel 

By 

Alfred F. S eligsberg 



Boni and Liveright 

Publishers New York 






Copyright, 1921, 
By Boni & LivERiGHT, Inc. 



All rights reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 

MAR 18 IQ?! 
0)CI,A611390 



TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Foreword 

I. England 

II. France 

III. Germany 

IV. Italy . 
V. The Sick Man of Europe 

VI. The Prospect 



PAGE 

9 

21 
40 

73 
107 
128 
141 




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SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RECENT TRAVEL 

FOREWORD 

RETURNED to New York in the 
middle of September, 1920, after 
a two months' visit to England and 
the continent of Europe, with impressions more 
deeply engraved upon my mind than at first I 
realized. During the first two weeks after my 
return I had a recurrence of what I must call 
nightmares, for the impression which they 
brought was more acute than that following an 
ordinary dream. Each time I dreamed that 
I was in Europe, and was unable to return to 
America. My consequent distress was extreme, 
and my subsequent joy was proportionately 

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great when I awoke to find myself in a pleasant 
little flat on the west side of Central Park. To 
a certain extent I am a believer in the Freudian 
theory of dreams, and I asked myself what pre- 
vious sensation or experiences could have in- 
duced the sleeping illusion which so greatly dis- 
turbed and distressed me. 

I had left America towards the end of June, 
most anxious to see for myself conditions in 
Western Europe, where I had not been since 
the Fall of 1914, after having passed the first 
months of the great war in Paris, the South of 
France and Italy. From the latter country I 
had been fortunate enough to travel in com- 
fort to my native shore at a time when many 
Americans were stranded in other countries, or 
were experiencing the greatest difficulty in ob- 
taining decent accommodations at fabulous 
prices. Like many of my countrymen I had for 
many years prior to the war passed my summers 
abroad, while up to my twentieth year I had 
lived chiefly in Europe, where, in consequence 

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of my father's premature death abroad, my 
family had settled. My preliminary education 
I had received in German schools, and I was 
fortunate enough to become well acquainted 
with the languages, customs and viewpoint of 
the western part of the European continent. 
In fact, when I returned to my native country 
and entered an American college, my mind and 
habits had become Europeanized to an extent 
which would scarcely be approved by the aver- 
age American patriot. 

After leaving my German school and coming 
under the influence of the liberal thought of 
Harvard, my views towards German civiliza- 
tion and culture underwent a great change. 
Not that I failed to appreciate the beauties of 
German literature and music, the achievements 
of German science and research, the masterful 
development of German trade and commerce, 
the unique powers of organization of the peo- 
ple, and the kindliness, or gemiitlichkeit, of the 
South Germans, among whom I had passed a 



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large part of my childhood. But I was commenc- 
ing to realize an aversion, which had been grad- 
ually developing during the later period of my 
sojourn in Germany, to certain features of Ger- 
man life and civilization. Above all was I 
antagonized by the growing ascendancy of the 
military caste, which was evident even to the 
perception of a child by the attitude of the 
officer class in public places. Nor did I fail 
to perceive as a youth the autocratic and bureau- 
cratic methods of government which excluded 
all but a few privileged classes from participa- 
tion in public affairs, a topic which in our little 
American household was one of almost daily 
discussion. 

My subconscious aversion to these matters 
was aggravated, and, so to speak, crystallized 
by an incident which is as fresh in my mind to- 
day as if it had happened yesterday. My 
mother was denounced to the authorities by a 
discharged butler of having indulged at the 
family table in condemnation of certain repres- 

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sive measures promulgated by Bismarck; and 
only the fact of our American citizenship saved 
her from arrest and prosecution. My whole 
being was so influenced by this incident that, 
although I still retained my love for German 
literature and music, I avoided, for more than 
twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war, 
going to Germany unless compelled to do so for 
a short visit by the exigencies of business or 
private affairs. It happened, therefore, that for 
many years before 1914 my summers were spent 
in England, France, Italy and Switzerland, 
and, strange to say, despite my German name, 
and despite the fact that my family, though not 
of Teutonic blood, had lived for centuries in 
Germany, I became in my personal friendships, 
business coimections and artistic associations to 
a large extent Latinized. 

I must beg the reader's indulgence for mak- 
ing this slight personal digression, and for men- 
tioning events in my own life which are quite 
unimportant and inconsequential except to my- 

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self. I am doing so simply in order to furnish 
a background to the mental picture which I 
had formed of Europe, and which to a certain 
extent would color my own views. I sailed 
for England in the early summer of 1920, thor- 
oughly convinced by the various newspaper re- 
ports and articles, as well as by the comments 
of certain travellers with a reputation for so- 
briety of statement, that I should find Europe 
in a more or less demoralized state, that even 
in its superficial aspects it would be greatly 
changed, and that things would be much less 
agreeable than they had been before the war. 
But I found it far less changed outwardly than 
I had expected, and social life, especially on the 
surface and as it affected the traveller and visi- 
tor, seemed very little different from what I 
had found it before the great war. 

Above all, the American traveller especially 
tender of his own material comfort is likely to 
be agreeably surprised; he will be disposed to 
wonder at the reports he has read of European 

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desolation, ckstruction, poverty and disease. 
Especially will he recognize, as he has never 
recognized before, the omnipotence of the dol- 
lar. The exchange value and strength of 
American currency are such that no matter 
where the American wanders in Europe he car- 
ries with him something almost as magical as 
Aladdin's lamp or Ali Baba's "Open Sesame." 
The power of the dollar may be, and is, consid- 
erably less in England than it is in France, 
Italy and especially in Germany and Austria. 
But, no matter where he goes in Europe, he is 
enabled through the strength of his currency to 
obtain all the comforts and, indeed, almost all 
of the luxuries he may desire, and at far less 
cost than in his own country ; and in some parts 
he can almost live upon his exchange, so to 
speak. Thus it is that at first he is compelled 
to think that affairs cannot possibly be as bad 
in Europe as they have been painted, for nat- 
urally he regards things as he finds them him- 

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self, and not as they influence the lives of oth- 
ers. 

It simply comes to this, that if you have the 
wherewithal, that is the purchasing power, there 
is probably no part of Europe where you can- 
not get practically all you want, for there is no 
country where there is an utter absence of those 
things which make up one's daily needs and 
which contribute to one's comfort. Even the 
average middle-class American of modest means 
will find himself almost a plutocrat when he 
exchanges his dollar draft for the currency of 
whatever European country he may be visit- 
ing. He might well be tempted in the circum- 
stances into extravagances of which he would 
not dream under normal conditions. Plainly 
stated it means that if you have the money you 
can live as well in most countries of Western 
Europe today as you could before the war. The 
hotels are as spacious and luxurious as ever; the 
restaurants are as glittering and gay, and pre- 
sent attractive and ample menus for the most 

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part; the health resorts and watering places are 
as beautiful and well cared for, and offer the 
old allurements. The theatres are not much 
less attractive, although there is some falling off 
in the performances ; the racecourses, the casinos 
and cabarets are, if anything, more crowded 
than before the war, and there is a recrudescence 
of frenzied, feverish gambling, the inevitable 
reaction from the years of war; and one thing 
which the war could not change is the delight- 
ful European climate, free from excessive heat 
and bright with sunshine. The crops are plen- 
tiful, and the famous vintages of France and 
Italy even more enticing than of yore to the 
palates of the victims of prohibition. 

Being somewhat of an Epicurean, I am free 
to confess that I enjoyed most of the attrac- 
tions, aesthetic and material, which Europe was 
able to offer, especially during the last three 
weeks of my stay on the Continent, which were 
spent partly on the picturesque shores of the 
Bay of Biscay, and partly in the rugged fast- 

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nesses of the Eastern Pyrenees, which I found 
especially and peculiarly charming. 

Why then, I asked myself, should I return to 
America to be tormented by such a nightmare 
as I have described^ It is true that I realized 
that certain phenomena of European life sad- 
dened me — the evidences, too often apparent, 
of the fearful struggle which had laid waste 
some of the fairest spots in France and Italy, 
taken toll of so many millions of lives, and 
filled the existence of the living with sorrow 
and desolation. Still this hardly accounted for 
the very real and actual distress which gripped 
me in the helplessness of my dream, and for the 
joyful relief with which I awoke. Again I 
asked myself what had impressed my subcon- 
scious self more than anything else, and was 
likely to cause the sense of fear that I could 
not return to America*? Suddenly it came to 
me in the happiness and peacefulness of Ameri- 
can life, in the sense of brotherliness and friend- 
ship which I found among my fellow citizens, 

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and which almost unconsciously I had missed 
in my travels through Europe. 

The European Continent today is a seething 
hell of hate; life is oppressed by a pall of vin- 
dictiveness and mutual distrust. Wherever one 
goes each country seems to hate some other 
country. The French hate the Germans and 
distrust the English. The Germans above all 
hate the French and Poles, and fear the Eng- 
lish. The Italians have all their old distrust 
and dislike of the Austrians, and hate the Jugo- 
slavs, while they bitterly resent the lack of 
gratitude of the French, and feel that the Allies 
in general have ill-repaid their sacrifices. 

It is this atmosphere of hate and distrust 
which pervades the entire continent, and which 
subconsciously oppresses your very being, mak- 
ing you aspire towards a freer, purer air, where 
you may breathe without absorbing the con- 
taminating and soul-destroying influences of 
suppressed vindictiveness. 

However much, then, one may be disposed to 

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deprecate the usual bombastic references to the 
land of the free, and to God's own country, one 
cannot help heaving a deep sigh of relief on 
returning to a civilization which is, at any rate, 
free from the fearful antagonisms and the sul- 
len suspicions which are now consuming the 
soul of Europe. 



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/. England 




T no time has the difference between 
English and Continental civiliza- 
tion been more apparent than today. 
Britain should not be regarded as a part of the 
European continent either geographically or 
spiritually. The glorious isolation which was 
her ancient boast, and which was largely her 
defence during the war, remains one of Eng- 
land's strongest bulwarks, and sustains her as 
part of that civilization which is the hope of the 
world for the immediate future. In spite of all 
superficial differences, never have American and 
English civilizations been more closely in ac- 
cord than they are today. Whatever differences 
exist between the two countries are due rather 
to geographical conditions and historical devel- 
opments than to any real disparity in life and 

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thought. Fundamentally, social life and inter- 
course and the broad attitude towards the rights 
of man are the same in both countries. 

In describing the conditions prevailing in 
European countries too much stress has, I think, 
been laid by certain newspaper correspondents 
on such things as the cost of living, over- 
crowded houses and hotels, darkened streets due 
to the dearth of fuel, and the absence of the 
old amenities. All these conditions, while 
sometimes not as bad as reported, though bad 
enough, are transitory. They are part of the 
inevitable aftermath of the war, of five years 
of superhuman effort which has sapped, if not 
exhausted, the strength of mankind, stemmed 
the slow and ordered process of humanity, de- 
stroyed idealism and disturbed the economic 
and social equilibrium of human existence. 
But, I repeat such conditions are transitory and 
sometimes more superficial than real. One 
must dig deeper in order to find those funda- 
mental conditions which determine a country's 

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true state of health. The permanent conse- 
quences of the war and a country's prospect of 
recovery cannot be judged by transitory phe- 
nomena, but are predicated largely upon basic 
causes, such as the geographical situation of the 
country, the physical strength and the moral 
fibre of its people. Such factors will ultimately 
determine a nation's will and ability to recuper- 
ate, to restore that which has been physically 
destroyed, and to rebuild the social and 
political fabric; to make good the loss in human 
material and to repair the damage to psychic 
ideals; in other words, to find again the path 
of peaceful progress and to regain dynamic 
force and speed. 

Examining these underlying conditions in 
England one will find that they are surprisingly 
sound. Above all, she has freed herself from 
that incubus of hatred which burdens the mind 
of peoples in time of war. Of course, there is 
still an undercurrent of bitterness towards the 
Germans, chiefly on account of their methods 

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of fighting, and their abuse of hospitality prior 
to the war, when they availed themselves of 
the proverbial freedom and lack of suspicion of 
Englishmen to fill the country with spies and 
betrayers. This bitterness has recently mani- 
fested itself in regard to the attempted 
rapprochement between certain Oxford pro- 
fessors and those of German universities, which 
the Times and others seem to regard as un- 
timely, especially in view of German impeni- 
tence. But the spirit of English sportsmanship 
induces the people, now as always, to give the 
beaten foe a chance. England is unwilling to 
be a party to any attempt to suppress the legiti- 
mate development of Germany along the lines 
of free commerce and fair opportunity. This 
attitude is not only the result of fairness, but 
also comes from the conviction that a recon- 
struction of the world's intellectual and 
economic machinery is only possible by and 
with the inclusion and cooperation of Germany. 
Even the most casual observer must be im- 

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pressed with the firm and determined will of 
the English people to recover whatever ground 
has been lost through the war, and, wherever 
possible, to convert that loss into a gain. In- 
deed, during the war England made a big effort 
throughout the world to secure the commerce 
which Germany had lost as the result of the 
blockade. Herein was shown remarkable pre- 
vision, not only in taking ultimate victory for 
granted, but in making the fullest possible 
preparation for it. The existing conditions of 
trade between England and South America are 
in themselves proof of British wisdom, energy 
and timely preparation. All that Germany has 
lost England has gained, and more. The only 
formidable rival which she has found in South 
America is the United States. In meeting this 
competition England, of course, has one great 
advantage. Up to the outbreak of the war, 
despite the determined and threatening compe- 
tition of Germany — which there was no at- 
tempt to fight fiscally by duties, bounties or 

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subsidies — England led the world commer- 
cially. London was the financial center of the 
world, by reason of its well-established system 
of international banking. The British pound 
sterling was the unit of monetary value the 
world over, and the far-reaching English system 
of international trade and bill discounting made 
London the center or clearing house of com- 
mercial transactions in the form of acceptances 
and credits. 

London long ago acquired an intimate knowl- 
edge of all the ramifications of foreign trade, 
of the standing of the different countries and 
their governments, and of the reliability of 
their principal financial institutions and firms. 
The English banker or merchant before the war 
was a real cosmopolitan, in constant contact 
through the cable and correspondence, and 
often personally, with the bankers, merchants 
and traders the world over. He had his finger 
on the financial and commercial pulse of every 

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country with which he had intercourse and 
dealings. 

The question of banking credit is always 
more or less a personal one, and the English 
banker generally had a very good idea as to 
the standing of those with whom he was deal- 
ing; he knew just where he would be justified 
in giving credit and where it would be wise to 
refuse it. But lately he has lost a monopoly 
of this knowledge and its corresponding oppor- 
tunities and advantages, for a formidable com- 
petitor has come into the field. Of course, I 
refer to the United States, practically the only 
other country which can make a bid for the 
commerce of the world. Nevertheless the Lon- 
don banker or exporter still finds himself in 
the enviable position of having, through the 
knowledge and experience acquired by genera- 
tions of predecessors, a big start over his New 
York competitor, who, so to speak, has to begin 
at the bottom and lay the foundations of his 
international trade. 

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There is yet another advantage on the side 
of England which cannot be gainsaid. London 
is more favorably situated geographically to 
finance the world's trade. Europe and, of 
course, the wide stretching overseas dominions 
and dependencies of Britain turn naturally to 
London for the completion of the details of 
large and complex lEinancial transactions. The 
average trader the world over has been so ac- 
customed to look to London that it is difficult 
for him to turn his eyes elsewhere and adapt 
himself to different financial standards and 
methods in connection with his trade accept- 
ances, discounts and credits. It will take a 
great deal of effort on the part of New York 
bankers to wean the world of the habit of think- 
ing in pounds and to induce it to think in dol- 
lars. Nevertheless the British banker fully 
realizes that the large finances of the world, in 
the shape of international loans, will have to be 
negotiated, for the time at least, in New York, 
since America is the only country with sufficient 

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capital to make huge advances or establish big 
foreign credits. All the same, England will put 
up a strong fight for its supremacy as an ex- 
porter and a financier of international trade. 

The sagacity and cool judgment of the Eng- 
lish financier are observable in another direc- 
tion. While England undoubtedly will make 
a bid for Russian trade, and is already estab- 
lishing herself in a position to act promptly and 
efficiently when normal conditions are resumed, 
it realizes that Germany has not only the best 
geographical situation in regard to Russia, but 
has also a distinct advantage over other coun- 
tries in having acquired, through at least a gen- 
eration of experience, knowledge of Russia's 
real needs; and that, having lost her colonies 
and the bulk of her shipping trade with foreign 
countries, Germany must naturally look to 
Russia as an outlet. The only possible oppor- 
tunity for Germany today is in the direction 
of the East, overland, and England is willing 
to let her have a fair chance in that direction, 

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that is, of course, so long as she refrains from 
political intrigue and any attempted coalition 
for future offensive purposes. 

On the whole, England's commercial posi- 
tion and outlook seem most favorable, once 
she has got over the internal troubles which she 
would appear to regard much more calmly and 
philosophically than those who look at them 
from a distance. This should not make one 
forget the staggering burden of debt and cur- 
rent expense which the country is shouldering. 
I admit that I was astonished to observe the 
irrepressible cheerfulness with which the Eng- 
lishman pays his taxes. While the indirect 
taxes, in the shape of customs and excise, are 
heavy enough in all conscience, the income tax 
is positively enormous, especially on moderate 
incomes. It is true that the percentage of the 
tax on very large incomes is not so large as it 
is in the United States; but after all there are 
very few such incomes in England, as com- 
pared with this country, and the burden which 

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is laid on English millionaires is only borne by 
a very few individuals. Take, however, what 
may be called the moderately large income of 
$50,000. It is taxed in England more than 
double, and nearly treble, what it is in this 
country. It is positively stimulating, if I may 
be allowed to say so, to see the cheerfulness 
with which the Englishman goes on paying his 
cost of the war, instead of attempting to cast 
the burden on posterity. And he has been do- 
ing this from the very commencement of the 
conflict. The manner in which England has 
financed the war by paying a large part of the 
cost through direct taxation, rather than by 
means of loans, has not only given the English- 
man confidence in his ability to meet his finan- 
cial obligations, but has inspired similar confi- 
dence throughout the world. 

Of course England has other troubles than 
those which are financial. Above all is the 
labor situation. But we should remember that 
this is not peculiar to Great Britain. Every 

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country, where there is a highly developed in- 
dustrial organization, has its labor difficulties, 
notably the United States, Germany and 
Northern Italy. We hear a great deal of the 
comparative freedom from labor troubles of 
France. This is due to the fact that France 
is above all an agricultural country, made up 
very largely of small landholders and a frugal 
and industrious peasantry, while its industries 
are not as large or as highly organized as those 
of other countries. In France we still have 
the individual artisan, who very often is a 
specialist and artist at his work. Labor in the 
mass is only to be found at a few centers, 
such as the coal mines of the Pas-de-Calais, the 
textile industries of northern France, the silk 
industry of Lyons, the glove-making of Gre- 
noble, the porcelain of Limoges, and the steel 
industry of Central and Eastern France. But, 
as I have said, France has no great manufac- 
turing industries comparable with those of the 
United States, Great Britain or Germany. 

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This, however, is to digress. Reverting to 
England, the labor question occupies the public 
mind before anything else, but although the 
situation was regarded as menacing during my 
visit, and increased in gravity after I left, I 
doubt not that the Government and the people 
will find a way out without any serious 
bouleversement. 

A good illustration of the difficulties with 
which England is beset came within my own 
experience before I set foot in the country. 
I left New York at the end of June, 1920, on 
board a British steamer. As we were steaming 
down the bay, I noticed that the vessel was 
going very slowly, and, as I learned, at half 
speed. At the Quarantine Station we were de- 
layed more than six hours, the reason being 
that about a dozen English stokers had suc- 
cumbed to the superior attractions of Ameri- 
can wages, and had deserted at the last moment. 
The consequence was that the agent of the line 
had to scour the city for substitutes, who were 

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found with no little difficulty. These newly- 
engaged men had to be brought to the Quar- 
antine Station for embarkation, together with 
a delegate of the New York Stokers' Union, 
and the unfortunate captain, in addition to the 
responsibilities and anxieties of navigating his 
ship, had to contend with the problem of pay- 
ing his new hands the higher wages demanded 
by the Stokers' Union, and at the same time 
pacifying the English stokers who had stuck to 
their job, and were in receipt of considerable 
less money than the newly engaged men. This 
was only one of many evidences I came across 
of the changed situation with respect to labor 
and capital. 



Leaving questions of economics and finance, 
it is worth while to glance at the social condi- 
tions of England. We were constantly hearing 
during the recent conflict that things could 
never be the same again, and certainly the war 

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has been a great leveller even in that most con- 
servative of countries, where custom and 
tradition stood for so much, and where class 
distinctions prevailed to such a large extent. 
It has certainly lessened that almost reverential 
regard for rank and social and titular distinc- 
tions which once existed. A man to be highly 
regarded in England today must have a good 
deal more than birth and money. People ask 
what he has done rather than who he is, and 
gauge his intrinsic value, instead of judging 
him by externals. There is also a certain 
change apparent in the manners of the mass of 
the people. The former somewhat reserved 
and dignified mien of the average Britisher 
has given way to a more brusque and less 
courteous demeanor. The same thing is appar- 
ent in another social stratum, that is the 
domestic or servant class. 

I was going to say that one misses the 
deferential attitude of those who attend to 
one's needs, not only in private houses, but in 

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hotels, restaurants and railway stations. This 
class displays a more assertive, if not less polite 
and willing manner. To the average American 
the change is not unwelcome, for we as a people 
are accustomed to more or less informal inter- 
course with subordinates and employees, while 
our domestic servants often become a good deal 
more than household attaches and drudges. I 
am aware that in England there was a very dis- 
tinct class of domestic servants who were the 
friends as well as the attendants of those who 
employed them. This applied to the great 
houses, especially in the country, where the 
servants were usually born upon the estate even 
unto the third and fourth generation. They 
were as proud and jealous of the family tradi- 
tions as the head of the house, and often more 
so, and theirs was the very perfection of per- 
sonal service and devotion. But the war 
claimed a great number of these, of both sexes, 
as it did of all other classes, and the exquisitely 
ordered life of the English country house is, 

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I am told, passing away. Certainly my own 
experience and observation convinced me dur- 
ing my stay in England that the war had 
brought great social changes, and none more 
apparent in the small affairs of daily life and 
intercourse than in the manners and service of 
domestic, hotel and restaurant attendants. 

Another noteworthy change is that which is 
evident in the outward appearance of the Eng- 
lishman. Once he had the reputation, rightly 
or wrongly, of being the best dressed man in 
the world, of wearing better clothes of better 
cut and better material than his fellows in 
other countries. It was easy enough before the 
war to gauge an Englishman's social class and 
condition by the cut and style of his clothes. 
Not so now. Outside of a very few smart city 
men and West End dandies, the high hat has 
disappeared from the streets, and with it the 
morning coat, or, as we call it, the cutaway. 
This fact, trivial in itself, to my mind shows 
that the average Britisher is far less attentive 

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than he used to be to external trappings and 
sartorial details which tended to assert his 
position in the social scale. He regards clothes 
today more as a necessity than an adornment, 
and he wears a business suit of easy cut and a 
soft hat where once he would have been horri- 
fied at the thought of appearing in anything 
but the silk or plug hat and the frock or morn- 
ing coat. It is a sign of the times not to be 
ignored, showing that convention and tradition 
play a much less important part in the social 
life of England than they used to. 

On the whole life in London is fairly un- 
changed. The streets are less brilliant, owing 
to the almost complete absence of the former 
splendid equipages of the aristocracy, and even 
the smart set are not so well dressed, although 
in the big hotels and restaurants like the 
Carlton and the Savoy the dinner hour still 
displays an assemblage of brilliant-looking 
English women perfectly turned out, or at any 
rate wearing their clothes with that easy dis- 

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tinction which is given to the women of few 
other countries. The street traffic seemed tame 
beside that of New York; the thoroughfares 
are not like Fifth Avenue in the afternoon and 
Broadway at night, compact with human be- 
ings; and there is nothing like the continuous 
procession of splendid automobiles that we wit- 
ness here. Compared with Paris, London still 
seems immense and overwhelming, but New 
York easily tops them both, and has taken first 
place in population, wealth and boundless 
activity. I also observed on my return that 
the New Yorker had superseded the Britisher 
sartorially, and is, on the whole, a much better 
dressed man ; while as for the women, nowhere 
else in the world can such varied, bewildering 
and well-clad beauty be seen, no matter where 
one may stray on Manhattan Island. 



r-sc*! 




//. France 

ROSSING the Channel and arriving 
in France one immediately realizes 
that a great change has taken place. 
In England the old gold sovereign and half 
sovereign have disappeared, and a man has no 
longer any use for the sovereign purse which 
he kept at the end of his chain, those coins 
having been replaced by one pound and ten 
shilling notes. Nevertheless, there is still an 
abundance of small change. The half crown, 
the two shilling piece, the shilling, the sixpence 
and coppers, as of old, circulate easily and 
abundantly, the only trouble being that, as 
prices are higher, you have to carry more of 
these coins about with you, and their weight is 
apt to be burdensome and their bulk a nuisance. 
But on reaching Boulogne by the same com- 

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fortable little packet boat which made the 
crossing before the war, you find a very differ- 
ent state of things from a monetary standpoint. 
I had a distinct shock when on walking down 
the pier I changed one of the new five franc 
notes which I had obtained at a London money 
changer's. Stopping at a stall to purchase 
some fruit, I was handed back for my note 
change amounting to three francs seventy-five 
centimes, as follows: Two one franc notes, two 
fifty centime notes, and three postage stamps 
for twenty-five cents each I I admit that I was 
annoyed at such unaccustomed small change. 
But on a moment's reflection I realized the dire 
straits to which French finances had been 
brought when the people were compelled to 
content themselves with such nondescript and 
precarious currency as fifty centimes notes and 
postage stamps. If also one considers that the 
French fifty centimes note only represents three 
cents in American money, the position is 
brought home to one with additional force. 

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The condition of France in this respect ap- 
plies in varying and far greater degrees to 
Germany, Austria, Italy and other recently 
belligerent countries in Europe. The Cham- 
bers of Commerce in the various countries are 
complicating matters not a little by issuing their 
own currency in small denominations, some in 
the form of banknotes, others in metal coins of 
aluminium, tin and different cheap alloys. 
Thus you are faced by an additional incon- 
venience, for should you leave one city or town 
for another, say fifty miles distant, the money 
which you take away with you from the place 
you are quitting will be unacceptable in that to 
which you are going. One is constantly chang- 
ing one's currency and small change in travel- 
ling about Europe, and needless to say that sort 
of thing is often extremely inconvenient. 

I vividly recall my relief when I crossed the 
frontier into Spain, and there found an abun- 
dance of coins, instead of a lot of small notes 
and stamps scarcely more valuable than cigar 

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coupons. It was a very real pleasure to handle 
once more the good old five peseta silver pieces; 
also two and one peseta coins, as well as cop- 
pers in abundance. As the Western American 
would say, I felt that I was once again handling 
real money. The comparative solidity of Span- 
ish finances at the present time is reflected in 
the literal hardness of its money. This, I need 
scarcely point out, is a striking reversal of 
the conditions which once prevailed. Spain, 
formerly the Cinderella of Europe, and, as Lord 
Salisbury once described her, a decaying nation, 
is now commercially more prosperous than any 
of her neighbors, and revelling in a currency 
which has a value more than double its French 
equivalent. 

Bad as French finances are, living conditions 
in France, at any rate for the traveller, do not 
seem greatly changed. Prices are, of course, 
higher, as they are in every country, but I found 
that the fall in the exchange value of French 
currency is not entirely offset by the rise in 

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prices. I may add, too, that in countries where 
the currency is at its lowest, as in Germany 
and Austria, the actual living cost for an Ameri- 
can visitor is also at its lowest. Thus I have 
found the cost of living lower in France than 
it is in England, and lower in Germany than 
it is in France. What the real living conditions 
are among the poorer classes — which are by no 
means the laboring classes — it is easy enough to 
imagine. I heard a great deal of grumbling on 
the part of the better paid working men, whose 
largely increased earnings should more than off- 
set the increased cost of living. But it is the 
professional classes and the clerks who suffer 
most, for while the cost of living has risen enor- 
mously, in many cases their pay has been 
stationary, and how some of them manage even 
to exist is a mystery. The one large class 
throughout Europe which seems to have suf- 
fered least is the peasantry, who, of course, 
exist mainly on what they themselves produce, 

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while at the same time they are able to dispose 
of their surplus at excellent prices. 

Returning to Paris, as we are most of us 
still very willing to do, life in that city is on 
the whole as attractive as ever, though scarcely 
so brilliant. Like London, the city is poorly 
lit, the streets are less thronged, and one sees 
comparatively few automobiles. Nor are the 
women so well dressed. Still, the little Paris- 
ienne retains her old coquetry and undeniable 
chic. The racetracks seem more crowded than 
ever, seaside resorts, like Deauville and 
Biarritz in summer and Monte Carlo and Nice 
in winter, attract the same sort of people as 
of yore, in almost the same numbers, and 
gambling is higher and more reckless than for- 
merly, thanks to war fortunes and the rich 
foreigner. Paris is trying almost desperately 
to maintain its old prestige, and there is a defi- 
nite effort on the part of the authorities, not 
excepting the Government, to attract and enter- 
tain the traveller and to separate him from his 

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money on the same old lines, enticing him by 
the old allurements, aesthetic, gastronomic and 
sexual. 

• ••••• 

Turning to the other side of the picture, and 
examining underlying conditions, one finds they 
are distinctly less favorable in France than in 
England. France has undoubtedly been most 
hurt by the war. The French newspapers, in- 
spired it is believed by the Government, have 
expatiated, and continue to do so, upon the 
courageous and energetic efforts of France in 
the all-important matter of reconstruction. We 
read reports of the many miles of railroad track 
which have been relaid, the long stretches of 
roads which have been repaired, and the many 
hundreds and thousands of houses which have 
been rebuilt. I saw enough to convince me 
that France has set about this work as earnestly 
and energetically as possible, and it is encourag- 
ing and stimulating to realize that Govern- 
ment and people are doing their utmost to 

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repair the actual physical damage resulting 
from a ruthless war; the work done by indi- 
viduals in many cases being not short of won- 
derful. I am afraid, however, that less 
attention is being paid to a matter which most 
vitally affects the ultimate recovery of France. 
To my mind the most serious loss which it has 
suffered is that of its manhood, and it is much 
more important that a strong effort should be 
made to make good that loss than it is to repair 
railways and roads and rebuild cities and 
towns. 

The greatest problem which France has to 
face during the next decade is that of increas- 
ing its population by the most natural means. 
The difficulty is enhanced by the fact that for 
years France has deliberately been the out- 
standing exponent of the Malthusian doctrine, 
which it has carried to a dangerous extreme, 
as for years before the war the population of 
the country was steadily declining. This, to 
speak plainly, has been partly due to unsound 

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private economics, and partly to the self- 
indulgence and indifference of a large section 
of the people to their responsibilities as affect- 
ing the interests of the community. 

In Paris itself the lack of men is not so 
apparent, as a large city necessarily attracts 
persons both on business and pleasure bent; and 
there is a large movement to Paris from the 
provinces, just as there is a large influx of peo- 
ple into New York from all over the States. 
But as soon as you get out of Paris you become 
painfully conscious of the scarcity of men, 
especially young men. There are fewer por- 
ters at the railway stations, fewer male waiters 
in the hotels and restaurants, and fewer clerks 
of the masculine sex in the shops and offices. 
In the post and telegraph offices most of the 
clerks are women, and in a railway restaurant 
there is so little attendance of any kind that 
one has literally to fight for one's food and 
snatch what one wants. 

I had to stay in Bordeaux overnight, and felt 

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it my duty to make a pilgrimage to that Mecca 
of gastronomes, Le Chapon Fin, which I feel 
justified in calling the premier restaurant in 
France. What was my surprise to find that, 
outside of two head waiters, the still delicious 
viands and choice vintages of the chateaux of 
Bordeaux were served by waitresses garbed in 
white, like the well-known feminine figures 
which dispense hot griddle cakes at the Childs 
Restaurants in New York. 

The vital question affecting France's future, 
then, is the replenishment of its human material. 
Before this every other consideration fades into 
insignificance, and it is saddening to the friends 
of the country to realize that it is not yet awake 
to the fact. The record of the last two years 
has been the reverse of encouraging, for the 
excess of deaths over births has been, if any- 
thing, increasing, and that way lies national 
decay. The question becomes additionally 
grave when it is remembered that but for the 
war the young men whose lives have been lost 

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would be now fulfilling their function as pro- 
genitors of the coming generation. The crucial 
point with regard to the repopulation of 
France is no longer the continued resistance to 
large families; the immediate danger lies in the 
fact that there are not sufficient young men to 
maintain the previous birth rate, small as it 
was. 

Two elements, however, are strongly in favor 
of the French; one is the peculiar, almost 
unique, reserve force which has invariably en- 
abled this people to rise to noble heights in 
periods of great emergency. The French are 
a peculiarly easy-going people, careless to the 
verge of cynicism in matters of ordinary every- 
day concern. But, when aroused to a sense of 
national need and great collective effort, they 
have always proved their ability to respond to 
the call of duty. I remember the first days 
of the war in Paris, when I saw the nation, 
whose lack of organizing power has often been 
animadverted upon, carry through the mo- 

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bilization of the army with a precision and 
promptitude which excited the admiration of 
the severest critics. The same traits of deter- 
mination, resourcefulness and devotion to a 
high cause were manifested by the French 
again and again throughout the war. The 
second point which is in favor of the ultimate 
recovery of France is its uniquely advantageous 
geographical position. The large stretches of 
sea coast on the Atlantic seaboard, the English 
Channel and on the sunny shores of that large 
basin which may justly be called the cradle 
of modern civilization, the Mediterranean, help 
to make it the most favored of all European 
nations. It is rich in natural resources which 
call forth the best energies of man, and which 
of themselves tend to the rearing and main- 
tenance of a fine and sturdy population. 
There are the rich vineyards of the south 
and the spreading wheatfields of Central 
France; there are the lush meadows and pas- 
turages of Normandy, and the many fertile 

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patches on the hills and mountains which are 
turned to such splendid account by an indom- 
itably industrious peasantry; and there are the 
wide navigable rivers; while the mineral re- 
sources of the north, east and center, when 
properly developed, are an assurance of great 
future wealth. These resources, combined with 
the energies of one of the most industrious 
and frugal people on earth, justify hopes for the 
future, if only France will recognize its greatest 
and most immediate need, which is the restora- 
tion and maintenance of its population at a 
ratio equal to that of other great and progres- 
sive countries. 

French history for the last hundred years 
presents a curious paradox. When we compare 
the French body politic of today with that of 
the ancient regime^ we find, if I may say so, 
that the head has changed but that the trunk 
has remained pretty much the same. The king 
and his ministers have been replaced by a presi- 

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dent and his cabinet, the latter responsible to 
an elected Chamber of Deputies. But, for the 
rest, the French administrative system is the 
same today as it was under the Bourbons of 
old, a wholly centralized bureaucracy, ap- 
pointed and controlled from Paris. There is 
practically no system of local self-government 
in France. This fact peculiarly accentuates the 
difference between the Latin and Anglo-Saxon 
forms of government. In Great Britain, and 
still more in the United States, the smallest 
political divisions exercise their own executive 
and legislative functions, and attend to their 
local concerns through their chosen administra- 
tors and officials. But in France a compara- 
tively small group of men in Paris have the 
power to run the entire country. It is true 
that these men change from time to time, but 
even in this respect there is little alteration, 
and a study of the personnel of the different 
cabinets during the last twenty years reveals 
constant recurrence of the same names, demon- 

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strating beyond peradventure that the central- 
ized government of the country is kept as far 
as possible in the hands of a small group. 

This system is aggravated by the fact that 
the French government has long had a sus- 
piciously close connection with the French 
financiers, in fact one might say that the Gov- 
ernment has depended very largely on the 
approval and support of the great banks of the 
country, whose headquarters are, of course, in 
Paris. In no country has there been a more 
obvious and dangerous association between gov- 
ernment and high finance than in France. 
Moreover, there has been an extremely sinister 
connection in France, and, it may be added, in 
some other European countries, between dip- 
lomatic negotiation and private financial enter- 
prise. With no desire to revive the past, or to 
stir up muddy waters, one cannot fail to recall 
the circumstances attending the making of the 
Suez Canal, the construction of Turkish rail- 
ways, the Panama scandal, and above all, the 

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placing of huge Russian loans on the French 
market. The French Government decided to 
help Russia, and, as usual, the big bankers and 
financiers were called into counsel in order to 
find money for the needs of that country in 
maintaining a government whose avowed ob- 
jects and methods at home and abroad were, 
or should have been, totally alien to a nation 
whose fundamental doctrines are liberty, equal- 
ity and fraternity. The bankers readily enough 
worked up enthusiasm among the many thou- 
sands of small investors, who purchased mil- 
lions of Russian bonds, to their present grievous 
disappointment and heavy loss. The French 
banker, in fact, served as intermediary between 
government and people. What abuses such a 
condition of affairs may lead to is only too 
apparent. And it is the Government of France, 
supported by the bankers, which today is most 
opposed to the recognition of the Russian gov- 
ernment because the latter objects to the re- 
payment of loans raised for objects which many 

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outside the ranks of Bolshevism, and strongly 
opposed to that political creed, regard as a 
perversion of either public or private funds. 
While some of the French opposition to the 
present day Russian government is due to a 
perfectly natural antagonism to the principles 
of communism, a great deal more must be 
ascribed to the desire of the investor to protect 
his threatened interests. 

A third member in the partnership existing 
between the Government and high finance is 
the newspaper press of Paris. In no other coun- 
try have the bankers and financiers used the 
newspapers for the purpose of placing their 
securities and forwarding their schemes to such 
an extent as in France. The expenses of any 
flotation in that country are heavily increased 
owing to the large sums which are expended 
in the subvention of the newspapers. These 
not only include the amounts spent in actual 
advertising, but are made up of sums expended 
for what we should call puffs in the form of 

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editorial comment, or news calculated to stimu- 
late public interest in a flotation. To what an 
extent the newspaper press of Paris is depend- 
ent on this very dubious means of existence is 
illustrated by the bon mot of the late Henri 
Rochefort, the well-known chauvinist journal- 
ist of the latter part of the nineteenth century. 
One of his journalistic enterprises was "LTn- 
transigeant," a four-page sheet, which did not 
carry too many advertisements or enjoy too 
large a circulation. A friend asked Rochefort 
one day how he managed to keep things afloat. 
He shrugged his shoulders and said, "C'est la 
cinquieme page," "It is the fifth page." And 
it is the "fiTth page" which still makes the 
money for many of the French papers, includ- 
ing some of those which ought to be far above 
suspicion of this sort of thing. 

The disastrous connection between politics 
and high finance is also discernible in the inter- 
nal affairs of the country. Up to a few months 
ago the French system of taxation, was entirely 

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in favor of the rich man. While England and 
America from the first raised a large part of the 
national revenue and war funds by means of a 
progressive income tax, bearing most heavily 
on the largest incomes, France has only very 
recently resorted to this method. Years too 
late it imposed a tax on war profits, after 
every other country had led the way, and, as 
a result of the lapse of time, the country will 
only be able to get back a small proportion of 
the swollen gains of the profiteer. The larger 
part of French taxation has borne most heavily 
on the consumer — the poor man. Everything 
he eats, drinks, wears and needs most in his 
daily life has been taxed up to the hilt, and 
state monopolies of a very antiquated char- 
acter have been retained in most objectionable 
form. One easily realizes how unprogressive 
and unfair France has been in its methods of 
taxation and its provision for the cost of the 
war when one makes comparison of its policy 
with that of England and the United States. 

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In those countries the burden has been laid 
where it can best be borne, indeed it can be said 
that America has gone to the other extreme, 
and has imposed on the largest incomes and on 
the profits of corporations taxes of such exces- 
sive character that their justice as well as their 
wisdom may fairly be questioned. 

But to resume, the excuse advanced for the 
French policy of taxation has been the fear of 
disturbing the financial equilibrium and de- 
stroying the morale of the country by means of 
new and unaccustomed taxes. The Govern- 
ment, owing to the pressure of the bankers and 
the unwillingness of rich financiers and other 
wealthy men to bear their fair share of the 
financial burdens of the country, has been com- 
pelled to resort to the more than doubtful 
means of making up the annual and ever- 
increasing deficit by large loans at constantly 
rising rates of interest. At the same time the 
Government has been disingenuous and lack- 
ing in moral courage, for it has withheld from 

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the people the true position, and raised false 
hopes as to indemnities which would be forth- 
coming from Germany. Of course Germany 
should pay all that is in her power, in order to 
make good to some extent the mischief she has 
wrought. But what that country ought to pay 
and what it can and will pay are two different 
things, and that is a matter which French states- 
men seem unable to understand, or, at least, 
unwilling to face. 

It is but ordinary justice that the sufferer 
of unprovoked assault and terrible injuries 
should receive compensation from the assailant, 
and everyone with a sense of fairness hopes 
that France will obtain ultimate compensation 
for its sufferings and losses. But it does seem 
improvident and foolish for a government to 
disguise its position and to discount its hopes 
and expectations by issuing an additional and 
extraordinary budget, in which it takes credit 
for problematical indemnities to be ultimately 
collected from Germany, thus lulling the people 

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into a false sense of security and wellbeing. 
To the failure of the Government to reveal to 
the community the real financial position may 
be attributed in very large measure the spend- 
ing mania which had taken hold of so many of 
the French people. The French are by nature 
conservative and thrifty, the stocking of the 
French peasant is proverbial. The American 
traveller, like myself, during his passage 
through the country, during last summer was 
likely to be surprised at the change which had 
overtaken the people. Everyone seemed to be 
joining in the dance, and high prices no longer 
deterred or affrighted. The people were ever so 
much more restless than they used to be, and 
were rarely content to remain where they be- 
longed. There seemed to be a veritable mania 
for travelling in France. The great railway 
stations and trains were crowded with people 
flitting here or there ; you had to book your seat 
days in advance and then you were compelled 
to travel in crowded compartments and forego 

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the ordinary comforts to which you were ac- 
customed. To a certain extent this wave of 
extravagance may be attributed to the super- 
abundance of cheap paper currency, which 
seemed somehow or other to have destroyed the 
old sense of values. There was a sort of sub- 
consciousness of the inherent lack of value of 
the sheaves of notes with which everj^one had 
to fill his wallet and pockets. Money had lost 
its solid backing and substantial power. To 
some degree also the wave of extravagance was 
due to the general sense of uncertainty which 
leads to a dread of tomorrow and bids people 
live only for today. The same phenomenon, I 
am told, was observable in Germany in the 
Fall and Winter following the signature of the 
Peace Treaty. After the wave of restlessness 
and recklessness had subsided, the people were 
left in a condition of utter depression, which is 
still tragically apparent. Let us hope that 
France will not pass through a similar experi- 
ence after all the woes she has already endured. 

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There are two outstanding facts in Western 
Europe arising from the war which have a 
greater significance and bearing upon the future 
peace of the world than anything else. They 
are on the one hand the devastation in North- 
eastern France and its effect upon French 
national sentiment; and on the other the sense 
of defeat and the depression in Germany, com- 
bined with the resistance to what the German 
people believe to be the injustice of the peace 
treaty, and their bitter resentment against the 
French, who are believed to be mainly respon- 
sible for the harshness of the terms imposed at 
Versailles. 

For the next decade at least these sentiments 
will have to be reckoned with, and upon their 
appeasement or aggravation the course of events 
will very largely depend. In the one case, how- 
ever, time will help to heal the physical 
wounds of the war, and to whatever extent this 
reparation is helped by Germany France is 

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likely to respond. But herein lies danger, io^ 
while Germany can gradually reduce the re- 
sentment of France by making good the damage 
wrought during the war, the antagonism of the 
German people is likely to be correspondingly 
increased as a result of the heavy burdens im- 
posed upon them. 

It seemed to me that a visit to Western 
Europe would be incomplete without personal 
inspection of the conditions which are at the 
root of French hatred and German bitterness. 
I had read many magazine articles and news- 
paper reports descriptive of the ravages com- 
mitted by Germany and I had seen innumer- 
able photographs and film pictures of ruined 
cities and towns and devastated areas. But 
nothing which I had read or seen conveyed 
more than a faint impression of the reality. I 
may add at this moment that I had also read 
and heard much in the course of conversation 
as to conditions in Germany, but there, as in 
France, verbal or pictorial descriptions but 

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poorly convey a sense of things as they are, the 
reality being far more terrible than can be con- 
jured up even by a vivid imagination. When 
one sees the stark ruins of hundreds of villages 
and towns, the shell-torn and untilled fields, 
the treeless landscape, and the miserable cabins 
or shanties in which the survivors are forced 
to live, it is not difficult to account for and 
excuse the bitter feelings which the recent con- 
flict has created in the minds of the French 
people. No matter how much one may deplore 
and deprecate the existence of this hatred, no 
matter how much you may desire to see the 
growth of a more forgiving spirit, one cannot 
close one's eyes to the tremendous and often 
totally unnecessary injury which has been 
wrought, and admit that the French attitude to- 
wards Germany is only human and the natural 
reaction of a grievously outraged nation. 

It would, of course, in the end be much 
better for France if a peace could be brought 
about which would lead ultimately to relations 

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of greater cordiality with Germany, thus help- 
ing to lay securer foundations for the future of 
Europe and of the world. But I doubt very 
much whether any other country which has 
suffered as France has would feel or behave 
differently. Let us suppose that England had 
suffered from an invasion which had devas- 
tated the fair fields and park lands of Kent 
and Sussex, caused the destruction of cathedrals 
and churches and of priceless and irreplaceable 
historic monuments which are the pride of the 
country, and also led to shocking and even more 
irreparable loss of life — let us imagine all this, 
I say, and then ask whether England would 
feel quite as leniently disposed towards Ger- 
many as she now evidently does'? Might she 
not be even more bitter and irreconcilable 
than is the France of today, and possibly be 
slower still to extend the hand of friendship to 
the invader? 

I decided to start at Strassburg and work up 
in a northwesterly direction to Verdun, follow- 

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ing as far as possible the battle line from the 
Vosges to the famous fortress. At Strassburg I 
took a good look around, and the thing that 
struck me most was the difference between 
Alsace and Lorraine. The latter, especially the 
western part, is French in origin, language and 
manners. The charming old episcopal city of 
Metz, lying on the banks of the Moselle, is 
thoroughly French in its general architecture 
and especially its beautiful Gothic cathedral, 
which might stand in Tours or Orleans. There 
are French names all over, and everywhere one 
hears the French idiom. The only parts of 
Metz which are German are the wide streets 
and parkways laid out during the German 
occupancy, and the massive railway station, the 
architecture of which is peculiarly Teutonic. 
Strassburg, so typical of Alsace, is, on the other 
hand, German in its architecture. The old 
streets of the city suggest Nuremberg or Roth- 
enberg, the appearance of the inhabitants is 
German, and everywhere one hears the German 

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language in the Alsatian dialect. The Alsatian 
has a peculiar character. Although he pros- 
pered greatly under German rule and govern- 
ance, he never ceased to chafe beneath what he 
considered the German yoke. But he is not 
happy yet under French rule, although un- 
doubtedly he prefers it to German domina- 
tion. What many Alsatians would like best is 
that the province should be erected into an 
independent state, precarious as this position 
might be. But at least Alsace would be self- 
determining and self-respecting and no longer 
the pawn of rival nations. 

I started out on my visit to the battlefields 
from Strassburg. Just to prove my statement 
as to the peculiar conditions prevailing in 
Alsace, I may mention that I found that the car 
in which I was to travel was of German make 
— an Opel — and my chauffeur was a charming 
young Alsatian, who had been forced into mili- 
tary service by the Germans, and who had 
served on the Russian front. He could hardly 

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speak or understand a word of French, and it 
seemed a dubious prospect to be guided by a 
driver who did not know either the language 
or the localities of the country which we were 
about to visit, having never been west of the 
German-speaking districts of his native prov- 
ince. Still, everything passed off pleasantly, 
with the exception of a few harsh looks at 
Verdun, where he asked my advice in German 
about the road. 

The battlefields of the Vosges present a truly 
tragic appearance. The wooded mountains 
and the lovely valleys at a distance look so 
peaceful that by contrast the ravages of four 
years' war when seen at close range are all the 
more shocking. As you pass along the road 
you still see striking evidences of the struggle 
— the Red Cross stations, the wire entangle- 
ments, the trenches, and the roadside dotted 
with crosses marking the graves of French and 
German soldiers intermingled. At one point 
we struck a cemetery where eight hundred ofH- 

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cers and soldiers of a French chasseur regi- 
ment were buried, and it was saddening to see 
it clinging to the side of a wooded mountain. 
It impressed me even more than the large ceme- 
teries which one sees near Verdun, where the 
slaughter was so tremendous. It was the 
afternoon of a beautiful summer day, when 
nature was at her brightest and best, and the 
contrast of a procession of broken-hearted par- 
ents and wives trudging up the hill in the dis- 
tance, far away from the railway, all of them 
on the same sad mission of seeking the grave 
of a lost son or husband, was overwhelmingly 
pathetic. There are other signs of the pro- 
longed warfare in these regions. The tops of 
some of the mountains and hills are absolutely 
bare. We Americans are accustomed to the 
sight of hills which have been denuded by for- 
est fires, but the sight of some of the Vosges 
mountains is immeasurably sadder when one 
reflects upon the terrible sufferings and sacri- 
fices of the soldiers high up on the peaks and 

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hill tops, far from human habitation — suffer- 
ings endured for four long years, with unbroken 
courage. 

We passed through Luneville, and after a 
night's rest at Nancy started early in the morn- 
ing for our main objective. Leaving Toul one 
strikes the battle line near St. Mihiel. The 
road from Mihiel to Verdun is a veritable Gol- 
gotha. One passes village after village abso- 
lutely razed to the ground, and you seek almost 
vainly for any sign of life or human habitation, 
until you are astonished at finding in some re- 
mote corner a miserable little shanty of wood 
and corrugated iron, where the old inhabitants 
are stubbornly clinging to their patch of native 
soil. I visited some of these cabins, and was 
astonished at the indomitable courage and com- 
parative cheerfulness with which the tenants 
faced the future. One fact which particularly 
struck me was that the destruction of their 
homes was taken by them as the inevitable 
accompaniment of war. The very victims of 

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German aggression seemed to harbor less re- 
sentment than the French in the uninvaded 
regions, or even the Americans, who had merely 
read of the ruthlessness of the enemy. 

On returning to Paris I found that other 
American travellers had noted the same thing, 
and I tried to account for this peculiar state 
of mind. I believe the explanation lies in the 
fact that the personal intercourse between the 
German soldiers and the French peasantry in 
the invaded regions was at times more or less 
friendly, and individual resentment was modi- 
fied by small touches of human nature; while 
at a distance the observer judged the situation 
in the light of cold reasoning, influenced only 
by abstract ideas of justice and right. I men- 
tion such individual experiences and reflections 
as a distinct exception to the general feeling, 
the outstanding nature of French sentiment be- 
ing a consuming indignation and intense hatred, 
behind which is that strong element of fear for 
the future. 

[72] 




///. Germany 

ENTERED Germany from Metz. 
To pass from France into Germany 
is like passing from day into night. 
Despite the devastation, despite the frightful 
human loss, and despite the heavy financial 
burden and difficulties of existence, life on the 
whole in France is normal in its human rela- 
tionships, in its hopeful outlook, in its burdens 
and griefs, and in its pleasures. Not so in 
Germany. As you enter that country you feel 
at once that you are among a people whose life 
does not bear its normal aspect. They are 
sullen and depressed, listless and almost hope- 
less. Everything they say and do serves to 
indicate that they are uncertain of the future. 
Above all they have the psychology of a thor- 
oughly beaten people. This I know is contrary 

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to the general idea, but I speak of that which 
I experienced. I had known Germany in its 
great days. I had seen its beautifully cared 
for, clean cities, thronged with an active, 
happy, proud and prosperous people. I re- 
turned to find the streets of the same cities 
comparatively deserted, their old spick and span 
appearance gone, while the people one met 
were sad and almost silent, and there were few 
traces among them of the old portliness and 
prosperity, in fact the majority looked flabby 
and shabby. The very trains which convey you 
from the frontier are changed beyond recog- 
nition. There are no longer the spotlessly clean 
railway carriages, the ample, comfortable seats, 
the efficient and smartly dressed conductor. 
The velvet covers of the seats have been cut 
away, the Germans say by the returning sol- 
diers; also the curtains, and in their place one 
finds coverings of material which is a mixture 
of hemp and paper, harsh to the touch, un- 
pleasing to the eye, but beyond all doubt dur- 

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able. The leather straps have also been re- 
moved and are replaced by straps of a compo- 
sition similar to the coverings. As you proceed 
on your journey you see many other evidences 
that the splendid organization of the country 
has crumbled under the pressure of the times. 
While the day carriages are uncomfortable and 
none too clean, there are hardly any dining 
or sleeping cars, the service is greatly reduced, 
and the trains run more slowly, but — a rem- 
nant of the old spirit of punctuality — they still 
run on fairly good time. The stations present 
a neglected appearance, being, like the streets, 
not as clean as of old. 

One thing which particularly struck me was 
the comparative lack of vehicular traffic on the 
streets throughout Germany. During my stay 
there I do not believe I saw a dozen private 
automobiles, and those probably were owned 
by schiebers, as the profiteers are called in Ger- 
many. The spending wave which had spread 
all over Germany during the months just pre- 

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ceding and following the signature of the peace 
treaty at Versailles, had receded and left the 
country high and dry. The people seemed abso- 
lutely exhausted and discouraged. Nothing in 
the social life of Germany was perhaps more 
striking to one who knows the country than the 
desertion of the beer gardens, which were for- 
merly the gathering places of the people and 
the scenes of family and convivial parties. The 
quality of the beer was miserable, though some- 
what improved, they say, over last year. But 
it was still a byword and a shame instead of, as 
it once was, the pride of patriotic and sociable 
Germans. 

As you sat down to take your first meal in 
Germany you were likely to receive a severe 
shock, at least that was my experience. The 
waiter at your hotel, the best in the place, would 
serve you breakfast on a table covered with a 
paper cloth, he would hand you a paper napkin, 
he would pour out a cup of coffee innocent of 
the bean of Brazil or Java. You would vainly 

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search for sugar, but would ultimately find in a 
small dish a speck of saccharine. During last 
summer the black bread was still being rationed 
to the people by the old war system of cards. 
White bread could be obtained without cards. 
I tasted both and I am fain to confess that I 
did not know in either case what I was eating. 
Whatever you eat in Germany today conveys 
much the same impression. I recall buying 
some peppermint "Life Savers" at the railway 
station at Mainz. They were the usual little 
white tablets with a hole in them, but that was 
all the resemblance they bore to the American 
article of the same name. They were innocent 
of sugar, although they were sweetened, while, 
as to peppermint, the taste was ingeniously 
imitated. The only things one can be certain 
about in Germany today are vegetables, which 
not even Germans can imitate. The meat, un- 
less you go to a first class restaurant, and are 
willing to pay extravagant prices, is of doubt- 
ful descent. I would especially warn epicures 

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against that former pride of the German 
butcher — the sausage. Humorists in the past 
have referred to a sausage as a mystery. It is 
hard to say how they would define it today in 
Germany. Everything one eats has a peculiar 
flavor, and you are never quite sure of the in- 
gredients. In the end you become a greater 
admirer than ever of German inventiveness. 
The German cuisine of today is the triumph of 
synthetic chemistry and culinary vicariousness. 
The reader should not assume, however, for 
one moment that there is an utter absence in 
Germany of any single article, whether neces- 
sity of life or luxury, which we are accustomed 
to consume. Everything is obtainable for 
money, and the American with the exchange in 
his favor can, without much trouble, indulge 
all his gastronomic caprices. The conditions 
which we have described, apply, however, to 
the people at large, who are not sufficiently rich 
to afford the tit-bits obtainable through illicit 
trade at exorbitant prices. 

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What I have said about substitutes and mas- 
querades in the matter of food can be said about 
many other things in daily use in Germany. 
You find ersatz, as they style these substitutes, 
everywhere and in almost everything, and so 
much has already been written on the subject 
that further reference to it may be regarded as 
tiresome. However, when the lack of many of 
the articles in ordinary use to which one is 
thoroughly accustomed begins to affect your 
personal comfort, you cannot refrain from 
thinking and talking about the extraordinary 
and unpleasant things you find in their place, 
and the matter is profoundly impressed on your 
mind. 

I have mentioned the paper table cloths and 
napkins, and I may say that during my entire 
stay in Germany I did not see, except in some 
private houses, a single linen or cotton table 
cloth or napkin. An English friend had an 
experience which I was happily spared. Stop- 
ping for the night at one of Cologne's leading 

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hotels, he was forced to sleep between paper 
sheets! As one passe? the shop windows or 
enters the shops you notice everywhere articles 
made from substitute materials, such as clothes 
and underclothes made from pulp, tobaccoless 
cigars and cigarettes, fruitless jams, creamless 
butter, leatherless boots, and so on. All these 
things forcibly draw one's attention to the lack 
of the ordinary necessities and utilities of life. 
The lack of coal is also plainly in evidence. 
To this is due the fewer trains and their reduced 
speed. The German people anticipate the ap- 
proaching winter with dread. A dear friend 
of mine, daughter of a naturalized American 
citizen, who is married to a German dwelling 
in a palatial private house, was compelled last 
winter to live in one room, as she had not suf- 
ficient coal to heat any of the others. I was 
told by merchants that the lack of fuel is also 
making itself apparent in the big industries, 
and is responsible for a greatly diminished pro- 
duction; while industrial progress is also seri- 

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ously retarded by a scarcity of raw materials 
and the increasing acuteness of labor troubles. 

As to the labor situation, that is only one 
phase of the altered conditions in Germany, and 
is indicative of the change which has taken 
place in the German mind in matters of disci- 
pline and organization. Those of us who knew 
Germany during the last twenty or thirty years 
before the war were impressed or annoyed — 
according to our point of view — by the perfect 
and, as some thought, excessive discipline which 
prevailed throughout the empire, under which 
the word verboten was the order of the day. 
The stiff bearing of the German officer, the 
mechanical regularity of the soldier, the cold 
correctness of the policeman, the formality of 
other officials and the implicit obedience of the 
public to regulations were all the indicia of the 
subordination inculcated in the German people 
from infancy. 

For decades they had been trained in their 
homes, in their schools and universities, as well 

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as, of course, in the army, to do precisely as 
they were told — no more and no less — and 
obedience was with them a second nature. But 
all this seems to have disappeared, and with 
it, to a large extent, the really beneficent effects 
of perhaps the most efficient national organiza- 
tion the world has ever known. Certainly the 
officials are slacker in their appearance and 
demeanor, and are less efficient, while they are 
more amenable to bribery. On the railways 
and in the other public services in Germany 
you expected something like perfection, and 
you got it, but not so today. The fear is that 
in these and other respects the country may go 
from bad to worse, unless the inherent spirit 
of the people comes to the rescue. 

With the loss of discipline and the absence 
of the former good order has come a relaxation 
of the rigidity marking social distinctions and 
intercourse, a matter by no means to be re- 
gretted, for in this respect the Germans were 
absurd, and the various official and social 

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grades were innumerable and baffling to all but 
those who lived in the country. The war, here 
as elsewhere, has proved a great leveller. The 
community of misery and suffering, the uni- 
versal despair caused first by defeat and then 
by what they consider the harsh terms of the 
peace treaty have brought the German people 
together and swept away many of the former 
class distinctions. 

Outside a few profiteers there seem to be 
scarcely any rich people left. Today it is a 
question of the degree of poverty and not of 
prosperity. Taking dinner one evening with 
some friends residing in a splendid mansion, I 
admired the surroundings. My host smiled 
rather sadly, and told me that the ownership of 
a large private establishment today was not an 
asset but a liability. He was a man who be- 
fore the war would have been considered rich, 
with a fortune of 4,000,000 marks, or, at the 
old rate of exchange, a million dollars. Under 
the new capital tax he will be called upon to 

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surrender to the government about half his for- 
tune, leaving him 2,000,000 marks, and on the 
income from the balance he will have to pay an 
annual tax amounting to about 50 per cent, 
thus leaving for his living expenses a quarter 
of his former income, and this in a depreciated, 
if not worthless, currency. 

I had to smile recently when I read Captain 
Tardieu's argument that the Germans were the 
least heavily taxed people in the world. This 
is not merely incorrect as to actual figures, but 
becomes ludicrous when you consider the 
heavily-reduced purchasing power of German 
incomes. The comparative valuelessness of the 
currency is itself a tax. The only people in 
Germany who are well off are the rich profiteer 
and the working man — the same classes which 
have prospered elsewhere. The hatred of the 
profiteer in Germany is even greater than it is 
in the other belligerent countries. A French 
merchant at present living in Frankfort told me 
of his experience when travelling on the railway 

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in a first class compartment. The train stopped 
at a wayside station where another train was 
on the opposite platform, and the occupants 
who were working men hurled at the French- 
man the opprobrious epithet of "Schieber" be- 
cause he was travelling first class, a luxury only 
indulged in by the profiteer. I had a like ex- 
perience when making a short trip in a private 
automobile, and my friends hastened to explain 
to me that none but a profiteer could afford 
to ride in a motor car. This was forcibly 
brought home to me when in Frankfort I ven- 
tured to take a taxi. The taximeters on public 
motor cabs have not been changed in Germany, 
and the fares indicated are the same as before 
the war. However, today in Berlin you have to 
pay just eight times the amount indicated on 
the meter, and in Frankfort I paid ten times 
the fare shown by the meter. There is a similar 
increase in the prices of almost everything one 
needs. When an American pays forty marks 
for the wing of a chicken he figures that he is 

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only paying sixty cents in his own currency, and 
is disposed to be pleased with his bargain. But 
the unfortunate German who receives his in- 
come in marks cannot afford to pay such prices. 
This accounts for the deserted appearance of 
the restaurants, beer gardens and other public 
resorts. The German today must stay at home 
and live strictly according to his pocket book, 
and exactly how he does it he alone knows. 

On one occasion I entertained two guests at 
a restaurant, one of whom was a German 
woman and the other French, We each had a 
pork chop, which I found on looking at the 
check cost eighty-one marks. Before the war a 
pork chop would have cost about three marks. 
For a bottle of inferior Rhine wine, which 
would have cost about four marks a few years 
ago, I paid forty marks, and so on through the 
menu. For some little antique embroidered 
bags, which before the war might have cost as 
much as 150 marks apiece, I paid 2500 marks I 
These few but salient examples serve to show 

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the general trend of prices, and demonstrate the 
problem by which the Germans are faced. 
Small wonder that they are discouraged and 
depressed. 

One of the most important questions in Ger- 
many today is whether there is a real and abid- 
ing change in the political spirit of the country. 
I think that this may be safely answered by a 
distinct affirmative. To commence, barring a 
small circle of militarists and reactionaries, the 
people have lost faith in the house of Hohen- 
zollern. The cowardly behavior of the late 
Emperor has placed the remnant of his sup- 
porters in the position of apologists, although 
the Germans as a whole believe that the Allies 
have exaggerated his personal responsibility for 
the events which immediately led up to the war. 
Nevertheless they feel that he and his family 
are thoroughly discredited. This sentiment 
naturally helps the evolution of Germany to- 
wards real democratic institutions, and, 

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Invalid Europe 

although the people regard the present govern- 
ment as rather weak, I noticed very few symp- 
toms of a desire to return to former conditions. 
The war has taught Germans that if they are 
to keep pace with the great democratic countries 
of the world they must adjust their psychology 
in accordance with modern political thought. 

Of course all great changes in the body 
politic are essentially slow in maturing, except 
in the case of actual revolution, and even then 
it is long before a country really settles down 
to an established political and governmental 
system. No one can foretell whether or not a 
reactionary coup may not result in the tem- 
porary reestablishment of a monarchical form 
of government in Germany. It took France 
nearly one hundred years to put its present 
institutions on a firm and abiding basis. There 
were three monarchical coups d'etat^ and three 
republican overthrows within eighty-one years, 
before the existing form of government could 
be regarded as permanent; and it is well within 

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memory how the first decade of the present 
third republic was shaken by monarchical plots 
and clerical and military disturbances, all of 
a reactionary character. It would be flouting 
experience to expect the current of political life 
in Germany to continue to flow in its present 
channel without some cross currents and im- 
pediments tending to divert it. Most students 
of present-day conditions in Germany seem con- 
vinced, however, that any serious reactionary 
movement will only be of a temporary nature, 
while the character of the people is not such 
as to justify the belief that there will be a 
strong tendency in the opposite direction of 
communism. 

In considering this subject one must also 
give attention to the question of German mili- 
tarism. That Germany is a chastened and 
altered country cannot be doubted. I had oc- 
casion to travel on the left side of the Rhine, 
as well as within the restricted zone on the 
right bank, and also in the unrestricted zone in 

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the remainder of Germany, and was thus able 
to observe the military aspect of the country 
under various conditions. The change from 
the old regime was extraordinary, and out- 
wardly at least there is no country in Western 
Europe which is less militaristic. I recall only 
having seen one officer of the old regular army. 
I also saw some soldiers, but very few, of the 
new army with the green insignia, who are more 
like gendarmes, their functions being chiefly 
those of police. As far as I could judge from 
outward signs and tokens, and I was by no 
means casual in my observations, the German 
army as I had known it no longer exists. No 
doubt, the old military spirit still exists in 
army circles and to a certain extent in the 
population at large. Inculcated as it was by a 
century of training, it cannot be expected to 
disappear at once without leaving some linger- 
ing traces behind. The Germans, even outside 
the military classes, have not lost belief in the 
necessity of any army, and many I know think 

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that the Versailles treaty has not left the coun- 
try a force sufficiently strong to cope with 
possible internal risings and disorders. On the 
whole, however, the German viewpoint with 
reference to the necessity of a standing army 
does not differ much from the attitude of other 
continental peoples. I remember of old, when 
I remonstrated with Germans on the size of 
their army and the cost of their vast military 
establishment, I was always met with the same 
argument, namely, that owing to the position 
of Germany, hemmed in on one side by France 
and on the other by Russia, a large army was 
absolutely essential. A similar geographical 
argument is used by France today, and also by 
Poland, which points on one side to Germany 
and on the other to Russia, as a reason for main- 
taining big military establishments. Unfor- 
tunately experience goes to show that armies 
which are kept up ostensibly for defensive pur- 
poses are, at some time or another, invariably 
used for offense. But although I deprecate the 

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tendency to reactionary militarism in present- 
day France, I do not wish to compare its spirit 
with that of the old German militarism. French 
militarism at worst is a feeble thing compared 
with the spirit of old Germany. It is rather 
the expression of a proud people trained by 
centuries of warfare. It is also to a certain 
extent a political and almost cynical gesture, 
indicative of a conviction of the futility of more 
peaceful methods. German militarism was 
arrogant, aggressive and feudal in its character 
and development. French militarism is mainly 
motivated by the desire for self -protection, and 
who shall say that this desire is wrong after 
all that France has endured*? But I do not 
think that French fears are well founded. 
While the Germans want and will strive to 
maintain an army not greatly inferior to any 
one of their neighbors, I do not believe that 
during this generation, which has known the 
unspeakable horrors of war and seen the 
futility and worse of aggression, they will dare 

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again to embark on a course such as that which 
bathed Europe in blood and left a great part 
of it in ruin and despair. Germany will be 
long in resorting to her old methods and tactics. 
She is not only beaten, but she has had a ter- 
rible lesson. 

While the question of the guilt of the war 
is considered by the rest of the world as res 
judicata, as we lawyers say, in Germany the 
visitor is still invited to discuss the matter. 
The Germans insist that although Germany as- 
sumed the position of aggressor, she was really 
fighting a defensive war, a war which had been 
forced upon her, and that, seeing the obvious 
intention of those who hemmed her in, she 
chose her own time, instead of being forced to 
fight when it suited her enemies to begin. It 
is, of course, the old threadbare argument of 
the so-called "iron ring" which Edward VII 
had forged around Germany, which, as was 
alleged, not only prevented her due develop- 

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ment but was really an aggressive and threat- 
ening gesture. 

To anyone who like myself had spent the be- 
ginning of the last week of July, 1914, in Ger- 
many, and the second half of that week in 
France, arguments of this nature seem the 
merest casuistry or sophistry. During the ex- 
citing days following the Austrian ultimatum 
to Serbia I had talked with many Germans, and 
found that they were all anxious to back up the 
Kaiser's defiant attitude, and were only too 
ready to resort to the sword as the arbiter. 
The French, on the other hand, hoped against 
hope that war would be averted. The distress 
of the people was truly pathetic. The desire of 
the French for the maintenance of peace was 
undoubtedly strengthened by their realization 
that they were no match for German prepared- 
ness. But no matter how much we may wonder 
at the peculiar perversion of reasoning which 
permits the Germans to regard themselves as 
fighting a defensive war, I believe that they are 

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Invalid Europe 

really sincere in this attitude of mind. More- 
over, it must be remembered that it had been 
artfully and sedulously led up to and fostered 
long before the war by the military party and 
junkers. 

Another question which quite naturally pre- 
occupies the Germans, and which is a constant 
subject of conversation, is the social and eco- 
nomic future of their country. The German 
upper and middle classes are as fearful of Bol- 
shevism as the same classes in other countries, 
and it is absolutely erroneous to think that they 
are ready to compromise or cooperate with the 
Russian Bolshevists in order to free themselves 
from the pressure of the Allies. At least this 
was the situation when I was in Germany last 
summer, and I have no reason to think there 
has been any alteration. It will, I believe, con- 
tinue unless the country is absolutely driven to 
desperation. While the labor situation is in 
some respects more acute even than it is in the 
entente countries, and while relaxation from 

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the former bureaucratic despotism of which I 
have made mention has to some extent encour- 
aged the more unruly elements, the German 
character as a whole has sufficient stability and 
inherent conservatism to permit tlie prediction 
that the country will pull through without 
revolution. 

In this connection, however, we should not 
forget that Germany is facing a truly terrible 
winter. The fuel and food situation is critical 
and menacing. The Allies in their own inter- 
ests, as well as those of Germany, will do well 
to pursue a humane course. In this case charity 
is synonymous with wisdom, and neither begins 
nor ends at home. I have mentioned the fear 
which exists in the allied countries of an even- 
tual alliance between Germany and Russia. I 
believe that under existing conditions this is a 
practical impossibility, unless the Germans are 
driven into a comer from which there is no 
other outlet. In that event Germany might 
turn to the sociological elements of Bolshevism, 

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and seek some sort of a political alliance with 
the Soviet government, but such a contingency 
strikes me as extremely remote. 

I had misgivings as to how I, an American 
citizen, would be received in Germany. I may 
say at once that there is hardly any feeling 
against Americans. I was indeed surprised to 
find that Germans did full justice to the mo- 
tives of America in entering the war, and were 
ready to admit that the German policy had 
left this, country no other alternative. They 
even seemed ready to admit that America in no 
way desired or attempted to derive material 
benefit from the war. The Germans feel, how- 
ever, that the fourteen points, on the strength 
of which the armistice was applied for, have 
proved a snare and a delusion. But many 
seemed willing to admit that deviation from 
these points was due less to the fault of Presi- 
dent Wilson than to his inability to resist the 
cumulative and almost irresistible force of allied 
pressure at the Peace Conference. The only 

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point on which I discovered the existence of 
real resentment against America was as to the 
continuance of the blockade after the armistice. 
One and all regarded this as an unnecessary 
cruelty, prolonging the hardships which had 
been so long endured by millions of suffering 
women and children. 

It may sound paradoxical, but the country in 
which I found the greatest appreciation of 
America's effort in the war was Germany. The 
German people feel that the final effort of 
America, coupled with the stranglehold of the 
British blockade, was the real cause of their col- 
lapse. Their willingness to ascribe their defeat 
to these causes is perhaps partly due to the 
fact that they wish to give as little credit as 
possible to France. They feel that they could 
have beaten the French, not only because of 
their own numerical strength, but also on ac- 
count of their vastly superior organization. 
There is also comparatively little feeling 
against the English nowadays, although the 

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Germans say that Britain has walked off with 
the lion's share of the spoils of war, including 
the German colonies. 

But the feeling against France is bitter in the 
extreme. The old racial hatred between the 
Frenchman and the Teuton is, of course, a 
prime factor; but in addition the Germans are 
convinced that the French are absolutely bent 
on ruining them politically and industrially. 
The occupation of the left bank of the Rhine 
is a rankling sore, and the French troops are 
regarded with aversion. The Germans are will- 
ing to admit that the American and British 
troops in their country are behaving rather 
well, but it can be readily understood that such 
occupation is resented under any and all con- 
ditions. The use by France of black troops in 
the occupied districts is regarded as a deadly 
insult, while the rather clumsy way in which 
the French have fomented secessional move- 
ments has caused additional indignation and 
bitterness.. 

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Germany holds, justly or unjustly, that 
France is mainly responsible for the harshness 
of the Versailles treaty. All these things, 
coupled with the conviction of the Germans 
that they could have defeated the French by 
themselves, make the character of the treaty a 
great menace for the future. This is even 
recognized by many Frenchmen. I remember 
one of them, who was connected with one of 
the numerous missions to America during the 
war, deploring the character of the treaty. He 
argued that France should either have insisted 
on a Carthaginian treaty, or have consented to 
a treaty which would have resulted in the 
establishment of fairly friendly relations be- 
tween his country and Germany. I believe his 
judgment to be absolutely correct, as France 
is not sufficiently strong to enforce the treaty 
as it stands without the aid of other countries. 
The fact is she must either resolve on the 
destruction of Germany, which is impossible, 
or arrive at a tnodus vivendi. Many of the 

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present woes of Europe are due to the inherent 
weakness and defects of the Versailles treaty. 
As one result France is seeking alliances with 
whatever nation she regards as a strategic factor 
in a future war, and the smaller nations, en- 
couraged by the French attitude, are exploiting 
the situation in order to further their own ends. 
The provision of the peace treaty forcing 
Gennany to make huge monthly deliveries of 
coal to France is pressing with great severity 
on the defeated nation. Of course, it is only 
just that Germany should make good the wan- 
ton and deliberate destruction of the coal mines 
in northern France. Still, when the Germans 
see not only all commercial activity held up, 
but when in addition the great lack of fuel is 
a menace to health and life, it is possible to 
understand their state of mind. It is, I know, 
very difficult to hit the juste milieu in this as 
in many other matters arising from the war, 
and we know that if the Germans had won they 
would not have erred on the side of leniency. 

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Instinctively you feel that between two victims 
of the war, both short of coal, the one which 
is guiltless should suffer least, if suffering is 
to be added to that already endured. But, on 
the other hand, one cannot help feeling pro- 
found commiseration with the innocent victims 
in Germany who are facing a winter at least 
as dark and cold as any that has gone before. 

The coal question leads us to the Saar occu- 
pation. The Saar today is under a Commission 
which is theoretically controlled by the League 
of Nations, but is actually administered by the 
French. At the termination of a period of 
fifteen years a plebiscite is to be held, in which 
all residents of the district of the proper age 
will have the right to vote. I passed through 
the Saar territory on my way from Metz to 
Mainz. When the train stopped at Saar- 
briicken I stepped from my carriage for the sole 
reason that I wished to set foot on ground con- 
trolled by the mystical League of Nations. On 
the platform I asked a group of people whether 

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it really was the territory controlled by the 
League, and a young lad of fifteen who was 
standing by interposed and volunteered the 
statement that in a few years it would again be 
German. It was to my mind an illuminating 
instance of the state of local feeling. The Ger- 
mans bitterly resent the fact that provision for 
a plebiscite should have been included in the 
treaty, as they regard the territory as absolutely 
German. The only reason for such a provision 
they attribute to a faint hope of the French of 
weaning the German population of the Saar 
from their allegiance to the fatherland. To my 
thinking the provision is as futile as it is vicious 
and vexatious. 

But the greatest source of aggravation in 
Germany is the manner in which the question 
of indemnities or reparations has been treated 
at the Versailles conference and elsewhere. 
Germany is absolutely at a loss to figure out 
her eventual liabilities. A prominent member 
of the New York Stock Exchange had a long 

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talk with one of the leading financiers of Ger- 
many. The latter, about as competent and 
well informed a person as anybody in his coun- 
try, asked the American, "What do you think 
is going to happen to us?" My New York 
friend was thoroughly taken aback, and all he 
could reply was, "How should I know if you 
don't?" This is typical of the terrible uncer- 
tainty and fear of the future which prevail in 
Germany. I am convinced that the people of 
the country, who are among the most industri- 
ous in the world, will never get to work in the 
old way until they know the size of the bill 
their country is called upon to pay, and that an 
entire population will not devote their lives to 
the fulfilment of conditions which they regard 
as so exacting as to be well nigh impossible. 

The argument which is used in connection 
with the coal question applies to indemnities. 
From the point of view of abstract justice Ger- 
many should be made to pay the damage caused 
by her aggression in France and Belgium. But 

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it is foolish to disregard the human and prac- 
tical side of this question, A nation will not 
work in order that the whole of its surplus 
products may be turned over to its former 
enemies, no matter how just may be the claims 
against it. I believe the Germans are as ready 
and willing to work as ever, but they must 
first see that their labor will in some measure 
ensue to the benefit of their families and of 
their country, otherwise there is no incentive 
either for the nation or the individual. 

I suppose that these remarks will cause some 
persons to assail me as pro-German, but I have 
to risk whatever opprobrium still attaches to 
that epithet. I may say, however, that my dis- 
like of the Germany of old has by no means 
changed. I feel as bitter as ever at the man- 
ner in which Germany violated Belgium and 
laid waste the fair fields and beautiful old cities 
of France; and my whole spirit rebels at the 
shocking disregard of human right involved in 
the deportations. I am still of opinion that a 

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German victory would have set back civiliza- 
tion for generations, if not for centuries. Still, 
after having seen the German masses in their 
misery, after noting the physical deterioration 
of the people who were once as prosperous in 
appearance as they were in fact, and after 
noting the profound depression which has over- 
taken all classes, I cannot help feeling for them 
a deep commiseration. 

When you have beaten a foe in open fight 
you are willing to give him a chance to rise and 
recover, and I do not see why nations should 
not in this respect follow the example of indi- 
viduals. I am firmly convinced that the world 
has nothing to fear from Germany for many 
years to come, and that more and better things 
might be hoped from her by extending towards 
her a forgiving and conciliatory attitude. 
Leniency in this case is, I believe, the counsel 
of wisdom. A Germany given a fair chance 
will be much less of a menace to the world than 
an oppressed and embittered people. 

[106] 



IF. Italy 

HERE has been so much misunder- 
standing and misrepresentation with 
|^8| respect to Italy that it is the duty of 
anyone who knows the Italian people and un- 
derstands the situation to contribute to the 
clarification of public opinion. There is a 
great deal of resentment in Italy at the treat- 
ment she has received from the Allies, and I 
fear that not a little of it is justified. Italy 
feels that she was neglected during the war, 
that she did not receive sufficient food and mu- 
nitions from those better furnished in these re- 
spects than herself, and who had them to spare. 
In addition she feels that she did not receive 
proper military help at the period of her great- 
est emergency, and that this was only given to 
her after the disaster of the Carso, when the 

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Allies realized the perils to their cause involved 
in the situation. In addition there is dissatis- 
faction in Italy at the manner in which she was 
treated at Versailles and after, and the Italians 
realize to their chagrin that France and Great 
Britain got all the plums and Italy the lemons. 
Of course the English got the major part of the 
German shipping and the pick of the German 
colonies through the euphemistic medium of 
mandates. France recovered Alsace-Lorraine, 
had the promise of large indemnities, got Syria, 
with the probability of eventual aggrandize- 
ment in Africa, and a commanding position in 
Europe. Italy, on the other hand, has thus far 
recovered only the Trentino and Trieste, both 
of which she might have had from Austria with- 
out war, and simply as the price of continued 
neutrality. 

Italian resentment is especially directed 
against France, as it is felt that the French have 
not duly appreciated the immense service which 
Italy conferred on their country at the outset 

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of the war. The mere fact of Italy's firm decla- 
ration of neutrality at that time was a tremen- 
dous help to France, and may indeed have saved 
the situation for her and the Allies. I myself 
was in Paris in the days just preceding and fol- 
lowing the declaration of war, and can testify 
to the keen anxiety of the French as to the 
Italian attitude, and the joyful relief with 
which the news of Italy's declaration of neu- 
trality was received. I particularly recall a 
procession of Italians on the boulevards of 
Paris, carrying their colors through excited and 
wildly cheering masses of people. 

The second great service rendered by Italy 
to France, was the opportunity afforded her to 
clear the Southeastern frontier of men and mu- 
nitions just prior to the first battle of the 
Marne, and to mass them where they were most 
needed. In the first days of September, 1914, 
passing through Nice on my way to Milan, I 
had a conversation with a French artillery offi- 
cer who had been stationed on the Italian bor- 

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der, and he told me that his own force was 
entirely without guns or munitions of any kind, 
all available supplies having been sent north 
to the battle front, and that he and his men ex- 
pected to leave for the same destination at any 
moment. Nothing, to my mind, showed more 
clearly the help rendered to France by Italy's 
neutrality at the most critical period of the Ger- 
man invasion. 

Much has been said in Germany and Aus- 
tria, as well as in the allied countries, to im- 
pugn the motives of Italy in entering the war. 
In the former Central Empires the Italians were 
called traitors because they finally took up arms 
against the other members of the Triple Al- 
liance. The Alliance was at best only one be- 
tween the Governments, and never between the 
peoples. The Austrians always hated and dis- 
trusted the Italians, and the Italians cordially 
reciprocated these sentiments, and with good 
reason. The chief of the Austrian General 
Staff, General von Hoetzendorff , was , frankly 

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outspoken in his anti-Italian sentiments just be- 
fore the war, and for years before the manner 
in which Austria fortified its Italian frontier 
against possible attack was perhaps the best 
commentary on the insincerity and insecurity of 
the Alliance on both sides. 

The Italian people never could forget the 
misery they endured beneath the Austrian yoke. 
Anyone who has friends in Lombardy will to 
this day be regaled with tales of cruelty and 
oppression endured by the Italians during the 
Austrian occupation. Anyway, the Alliance 
was only a defensive treaty at best, and the 
casus fcederis never arose, as Germany and Aus- 
tria were the attackers and not the attacked in 
the late war. The secretive and treacherous 
manner in which the Central Empires proceeded 
in their diplomatic negotiations and warlike 
preparations before the war, keeping Italy as 
much in the dark as any other country, clearly 
absolves the latter from any charge of 
treachery. 

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Invalid Europe 

Likewise in the allied countries have the mo- 
tives of Italy in entering the war been cruelly 
and ungratefully misjudged and misrepre- 
sented. She is accused of corrupt and merce- 
nary motives, and of having held out until she 
could drive the best bargain possible. The time 
when Italy actually entered the war, May, 
1915, is the strongest proof of the falsity of 
this charge, because at that time the Russian 
debacle was developing. If Italy had really 
wished to drive a bargain she could at that time 
have made a much better one with Austria, as 
the Trentino, and probably Trieste, might have 
been had for the asking, and merely as the price 
of neutrality, thus sparing Italy the enormous 
sacrifice of blood and treasure which she in- 
curred by entering the war on the side of the 
Allies. However material the policy of the 
Government may have been — and in this re- 
spect I am strongly disposed to believe that 
Italy's detractors have, as usual, overstated their 
case — the people can be absolved from any such 

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charge. Like all other peoples, the Italians 
have their faults. They may be too excitable 
and impulsive, but they are genuine in their 
sentiments and ingenuous in their expression. 
I spent part of the months of September and 
October, 1914, in Italy, and was in Milan 
during the terrible days of the first battle of 
the Marne and the siege of Antwerp, and I can 
testify to the passionate indignation of the 
Italian people at Germany's violation of Bel- 
gian neutrality and the ruthless conduct of the 
war by the Prussian army. The Government 
may have hesitated, and in fact they did, at en- 
tering the war, but they were swept off their 
feet by a wave of popular sentiment which 
there was no resisting. No greater wrong has 
ever been done to the sentiments of a proud 
people than the slurs which have been cast 
upon Italy's motives for entering the war. 

Of course, the greatest source of Italian irri- 
tation is the Fiume question. The issue has, I 
believe, received too much prominence, and has 

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been exaggerated on both sides. As in most 
other human questions, and especially interna- 
tional disputes, there is some justice on either 
side. President Wilson's desire to give the 
Jugo-Slavs an outlet for their commerce at 
Fiume was undoubtedly sincere, and to some 
extent justified. But his attitude and actions 
were indiscreet, to say the least, especially in 
appealing to the Italian people over the head of 
their chief representative at the Peace Confer- 
ence. In doing this he took his own personal 
popularity with the Italians — which up to that 
time was undoubted — too much for granted, 
and adopted a provocative and tactless course. 
He ignored the fact that Fiume itself is Italian 
from a historic and ethnographic standpoint. 
Here again I may be permitted to point out that 
there should be a distinction made between the 
motives of the Government and the sentiments 
of the people. The demand for Fiume by the 
former was an afterthought, and was only ad- 
vanced when it was realized that Trieste would 

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lose its commercial preeminence if the adjacent 
port of Fiume was handed over to the Jugo- 
slavs, who command the immediate hinterland, 
and would divert practically all their trade to 
Fiume. The issue, as far as the Italian people 
are concerned— differentiating them from their 
Government — is entirely one of racial senti- 
ment and national pride, and is free from the 
ulterior motives which certain people are so 
fond of attributing to Italy in this as in other 
respects. 

It is greatly to be deplored that so much fuss 
should have been made over the Fiume issue at 
a time when the liberal aspirations of our Presi- 
dent could have been so much better employed 
with another question relating to the settlement 
of the Italian borders. If there was one point 
on which Mr. Wilson should have taken a firm 
stand it was with respect to the issue presented 
to him by the Tyrol. Those familiar with the 
north-eastern portion of Italy prior to the war 
realized the ultimate necessity of modifying the 

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then existing border line. From every point 
of view the retention of the Trentino by Aus- 
tria was unjust and indefensible. Ethnographi- 
cally, linguistically and sentimentally the peo- 
ple of the Trentino belong to Italy. Moreover, 
so long as Austria was in possession of this ter- 
ritory, Italy, from a military point of view, 
had a loaded pistol pointed at her heart, and 
was at the mercy of her neighbor. Many of us 
who have sojourned on the sunny shores of the 
lovely Lake of Garda, in the midst of Lom- 
bardy, foresaw the impossibility of the contin- 
uance indefinitely of Austrian rule in this beauti- 
ful and typically Italian region. It was a per- 
petual affront, a menace of the mailed fist, and 
it was almost as repugnant to impartial foreign 
sentiment as it was to that of Italy itself. A 
perpetual black cloud seemed to hang over the 
northern part of this lovely region. 

The frontier line of the Tyrol, as drawn by 
the Treaty of St. Germain, errs almost as much 
on the other side. The northerly part of the 

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Tyrol is absolutely German in language, de- 
scent and customs. No people on the face of 
the earth have made a braver fight to preserve 
their individuality and independence than the 
mountaineers of the Tyrol. Their national 
hero, Andreas Hofer, is the embodiment of their 
sentiment of self-determination. There could 
be no more striking instance of the stultification 
of the professed sentiments of the allied gov- 
ernments to preserve the territorial integrity 
and to protect the interests of small races than 
was manifested in the handing over of the Tyrol 
to Italy. 

It is undeniable that the frontier as drawn by 
the Treaty of St. Germain runs across the 
highest mountain crests, and theoretically 
speaking this would be the ideal military border 
line, as it gives an advantage to neither people. 
It is equally certain, however, that the linguis- 
tic and racial line running somewhere south of 
Bozen is from a military standpoint a frontier 
sufficiently formidable to protect both sides in 

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case of warlike emergency. If one considers 
how the frontier of the Vosges, and the fort- 
resses by which it was guarded from Belfort to 
Verdun, successfully withstood assaults extend- 
ing over more than four years, little doubt can 
be entertained that Italy would receive ade- 
quate protection from invasion without subject- 
ing the Tyrolese to a foreign yoke. 

How easily nations seem to forget! The 
Italians were for years bemoaning the fate of 
their oppressed brethren of the Trentino, and 
here they are themselves creating a new Irre- 
denta ! No one who has ever passed a summer 
in the Tyrol and has known its charming peo- 
ple, with their simple faith and loyal adherence 
to their nationality, can help sharing the indig- 
nation to which Lord Bryce has given such forc- 
ible and eloquent expression. 

• ••••• 

The prospects of Italy's commercial recovery 
are regarded with a good deal of pessimism in 
Europe, but it may safely be asserted that the 

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position is by no means so hopeless as some 
people seem anxious to assume. It is true, of 
course, that compared with her associates in the 
war Italy is a poor country. She has a large 
public debt, she has a great deal of cheap paper 
money, and, aside from these temporary fac- 
tors, lacks many things in the way of natural 
resources — timber, for instance, the supply of 
which has been practically exhausted by thou- 
sands of years of wasteful cutting. There is 
no coal, and, barring a small deposit in the Isle 
of Elba, no iron. On the other hand, the coun- 
try has a superb situation. Protruding as it 
does into the Mediterranean, it is ideally situ- 
ated to catch the trade between the western 
countries of Europe and those of the Near East. 
Its raw silk industry is second to none, the 
plains of Lombardy hum with the activities of 
many prosperous industries, while the agricul- 
tural wealth of the south permits in normal 
times a not inconsiderable export of surplus sup- 
plies of wine and oil. 

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Withal, Italy has a population which though 
at present not as active as in normal times is 
both industrious and frugal. From one point 
of view Italy differs markedly from its Latin 
neighbor across the Alps, and that is that its 
population is not only increasing but is over- 
flowing to such an extent that it is compelled 
to seek a constant outlet by means of emigra- 
tion. Being industrious and thrifty, the Italian 
prospers abroad more than most, and the annual 
remittances to Italy by its faithful and frugal 
sons and daughters who have emigrated are an 
important source of national prosperity. Of 
course, we must not forget one of Italy's great- 
est assets, and that is the unfailing attraction it 
presents to the tourist and traveller, on account 
of its magnificent and unique historic monu- 
ments, as well as its beautiful scenery and cli- 
mate. Thousands of people are annually at- 
tracted from all over the world, and leave a 
great deal of money behind them. No other 
country can approach Italy in these respects, and 

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when conditions once again become normal Ital- 
ian travel will present its old attractions, and 
the steady flow of foreign money into the coun- 
try will be resumed. 

As to the social and political unrest, con- 
cerning which the American papers were so full 
in the summer of 1920, while there were many 
and great exaggerations with respect to riots 
and risings, all Italians are agreed that their 
country is on the eve of great changes. The 
calmest and best judges, however, feel confident 
that these will be accomplished without revo- 
lution. It is not generally realized that for 
years Italy has been the most democratic coun- 
try on the European continent. It is a kingdom 
in name only. Its whole political and social 
structure is singularly free from social distinc- 
tions and caste prejudices and privileges. The 
discussion of public affairs is absolutely un- 
trammelled, and in the north particularly is 
marked by a high level of seriousness and intel- 
ligence. In this connection one must always 

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bear in mind the vast difference which exists 
between southern and northern Italy. In the 
latter, especially in the valley of the Po and 
the adjacent territory, the people, including the 
peasants, have had the benefit of a century of 
public education; while its industries are highly 
developed and among the finest in Europe. 
The industrial and public life of northern Italy 
compares favorably with that of the most ad- 
vanced countries. In the south, where progress 
has been retarded by generations of Bourbon 
tyranny and clerical misrule, conditions remain 
primitive and often mediseval. There one finds 
large estates on which feudal conditions still 
exist. The problems which face the south are 
entirely different from those which have to be 
met by the north. In the latter, industrial con- 
ditions are much the same as they are in Brit- 
ain or America, and social problems will prob- 
ably be met in much the same manner in all 
three countries. The large land holdings in 
southern Italy will present in the future a diflfi- 

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cult problem. But Italy, after all, is not the 
only country which will have to face that 
question. Much the same conditions prevail in 
Spain, and in an aggravated degree. For in- 
stance, large industrial and radical centres like 
Barcelona and Bilbao exist almost side by side 
with agricultural provinces owned and con- 
trolled by feudal lords of immense domains, 
and not very different in their outlook from 
their ancestors of the middle ages. I repeat, in 
this respect conditions in Spain are even more 
serious than they are in southern Italy, the 
chasm which divides the upper from the lower 
class being much wider and deeper in Spain. 

This vexed question of large landed posses- 
sions exists in Scotland, the eastern provinces 
of Germany, Poland and Hungary, although 
the precise position in the last named country 
since the war is not quite clear, reliable in- 
formation being lacking. Large estates and a 
dispossessed, impoverished peasantry constitute 
an anachronism at the present time, and it is 

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one which will surely be removed by the com- 
ing generation. In this connection France is 
the most advanced country in Europe. Its 
large estates were divided into small parcels 
during the revolution at the end of the i8th 
Century, and much of the social stability of the 
country is due to the existence of a prosperous 
and contented peasantry which owns and tills 
its own soil. 

We need not be surprised, then, to find great 
changes in all countries where large estates still 
exist, for they are offensive to the spirit of the 
times. Their ownership in the opinion of many 
is much more objectionable than the accumula- 
tion of personal treasure, such as cash, stocks 
and shares, pictures, jewels and so on. When 
the people are excluded from the soil, they feel 
that they are the victims of a wrong done at 
some time or another in the history of the 
world, a wrong which should be righted today. 
It is to be expected, then, that the next gen- 
eration will be marked by a determined effort 

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on the part of the peasantry of Europe to do 
away with the old systems of land tenure. The 
change need not necessarily be a revolutionary 
one. 

It is true that Russia has recently divided 
the land among the peasants in revolutionary 
fashion, but we must remember the terrible 
conditions which prevailed there for so many 
generations, and the complete collapse of the 
nation following its withdrawal from the war. 
On the other hand, a gradual change has been 
brought about in England by Lloyd George 
by means of a land tax, the imposition of which 
at the time made him an object of hatred and 
fear by the land-owning class, many of whom 
now acclaim him as a patriot. We must not 
forget also that an honest attempt has been 
made by the British Government to solve in a 
forcible but orderly manner the question of 
absentee landlordism in Ireland, doing justice 
to the landlord as well as to the tenant. How 
economic questions of similar difficulty may be 

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variously solved is demonstrated by a compari- 
son of the methods by which the problems of 
Russian serfdom and American slavery were 
settled. In one country the slaves were freed 
entirely without recompense to the owners, 
while in the other the landed proprietors re- 
ceived payment from the state, extending over 
a period of years. How this complicated and 
troublesome question of land tenure will be 
settled in European countries cannot be pre- 
dicted. Different methods will probably be 
resorted to in different countries, and possibly 
final results may differ likewise. 

As to the changes in industrial ownership 
and control, Italians seem to be agreed that the 
masses will no longer be satisfied with things 
as they are, or even with a system of profit 
sharing merely, but will require a measure of 
control of the industries in which they are con- 
cerned. What shall be the extent or form of 
that control has yet to be decided. The process 
is in the making, and for the time being no 

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doubt there will be a great deal of discussion, 
and perhaps occasionally a certain amount of 
disorder and idleness. But eventually a way 
of settling the question in a practical manner 
will assuredly be found. If in this respect Italy 
is able to show the way to other nations she 
will place the world, which is already so largely 
in her debt, under another obligation and will 
add to her claims upon civilization the inaugu- 
ration of a second — a social — renaissance. 



[127] 




V. The Sick Man of 
Europe 

OR generations the Turk has been 
called the sick man of Europe. He 
was never so sick as he has been since 
the close of the war. But although almost in 
the throes of dissolution, he is by no means 
dead, or even moribund. His corrupt and fes- 
tering body, or what remains of it, has been re- 
moved to Asia, where he occasionally shows 
some of his old vitality by the slaughter of a 
few thousand Armenians. But another and 
much bigger sick man is now occupying the at- 
tention of the world, and that is the European 
continent itself. We are standing at the bed- 
side of the patient, wondering if he will re- 
cover, and if so when. Many of us are pre- 
scribing remedies without making a careful 

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diagnosis, that is, without inquiry into the ori- 
gin and cause of his complaint and deciding its 
true character. The disease from which Europe 
is suffering is a very old one — thousands of 
years old. If the patient were an individual 
we should diagnose his complaint as homicidal 
mania. 

Since the memory of man the history of con- 
tinental Europe has been one uninterrupted 
course of internecine strife and slaughter. The 
alleged motives or reasons for war have been 
many. Sometimes it has been the sheer love of 
conquest and aggrandizement, at others the 
dynastic ambitions of ruling families have called 
to arms nations which had no other reason for 
disagreeing or fighting. Again, the reasons 
have been religious — save the mark I and yet 
again they have been commercial and sordid; 
while in many cases strife has arisen from racial 
antipathies and rivalries. However it all may 
have been. Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall," is 
able to point out that there is only one period 

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in European history when there was a com- 
paratively lengthy interval of peace, that being 
under the Flavian emperors of Rome. Except 
for that golden century there has hardly been a 
lull in the strife down to the present day, save 
for the shortest possible periods, when fighting 
came temporarily to a standstill through sheer 
exhaustion. 

All races and nations of Europe seem to have 
been equally guilty. Whoever was for the time 
being on top, and felt himself sufficiently strong 
— that is, stronger than his neighbor — would 
start in, and go on subjugating other tribes and 
nations until he was made to stop by someone 
stronger still or more audacious. Whether it 
was Charles the Eighth or Francis the First of 
France, Louis the Fourteenth or the First or 
Third Napoleon; whether it was the great Elec- 
tor of Prussia or Frederick the Great, or Wil- 
liam the First or Second of Germany; whether 
it was Charles the Fifth or Maria Theresa of 
Austria; whether it was Phillip the Second of 

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Spain; or Catherine II of Russia; or whether 
it was Gustavus Adolphus or Charles the 
Twelfth of Sweden — all were possessed in vary- 
ing degrees by the same demon of territorial 
greed and self-aggrandizement. The list could 
be largely extended, covering all periods of 
European history. For the last fifty years the 
Germans have gradually realized that they 
were the strongest of the European nations, not 
only numerically, but also because of their pow- 
ers of organization and preparation. Led by 
their late Kaiser, they followed 

. . . the good old rule, the simple plan. 
That they should take who have the power. 
And they should keep who can. 

From time to time, when they thought the occa- 
sion was favorable, they would attack ruth- 
lessly. The reader will probably say that after 
all Europe did not differ from other parts of 
the world. It may even be admitted that 
Europe was better than the rest, but then it 

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claimed to be the most civilized, and should 
have been superior to the unbridled passions of 
savage peoples. Returning to the sick man 
simile, the pathological history of the patient is 
indeed profoundly discouraging, and the prog- 
nosis is scarcely more favorable, for after five 
years of the most terrible warfare ever known 
there are still nations not only ready but eager 
to resort to arms rather than to peaceful arbitra- 
ment, and who prefer slaying their opponents to 
taking counsel with them. 

Up to the last war Europe could freely in- 
dulge its penchant for internecine strife, and 
could weaken its material, intellectual and 
spiritual resources without fear that some other 
power in the world outside might take its place. 
The present conditions, however, are different. 
There are now great and growing civilizations 
outside of Europe, and, if Europe continues to 
follow the old course of self-destruction, they 
will be ready to take the leadership in humanity 
and in all those things which make for material 

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and moral progress. Great Britain, which in 
this respect must not be regarded as a European 
state, especially as the greater part of its terri- 
tories and interests lie outside Europe, and that 
other big English-speaking nation, the United 
States of America, are today world powers, 
ready to pick up the tattered, bemired banner 
of civilization and carry it forward on the path 
of peace and progress. The many causes which 
contribute to warfare in the small European 
states are non-existent in the United States and 
the dominions of the British Empire. They are 
less densely populated, there are no dynastic 
ambitions and jealousies, there is no greedy de- 
sire on the part of one country to profit at the 
expense of the other, but, on the contrary, they 
are growing up side by side in mutual peace and 
concord, and they are more certain that as the 
years pass the future of the world will very 
largely depend upon them. The terrible waste 
in human material and ideals of which Europe 
has allowed herself to be the victim for so many 

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centuries will be spared to these newer com- 
munities, and who knows if the passing of the 
hegemony of the world into the control of the 
English-speaking peoples has not already com- 
menced ? 

Surely one is justified in asking whether the 
last war has taught Europe any lesson when one 
sees and hears many of the things which are 
happening on the continent. I recall how on 
the first day of French mobilization, one of my 
best friends in France, a talented painter, who 
had passed some seasons in New York, came to 
bid me good-bye just prior to his call to arms. 
He was a man of advanced political views and 
a strong anti-militarist. When he shook hands 
with me for the last time he said, "Well, we are 
going to fight, and we will bring back from the 
war the United States of Europe." I dined 
with the same friend in one of the Bohemian 
restaurants of Paris on the eve of my return to 
America this summer. He had served through- 

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out the war, and had received both the French 
and Italian croix de guerre, and an English 
decoration for distinguished service. His old 
political ideals had gone, the war had made him 
a rampant nationalist, and his United States 
of Europe had disappeared in the smoke of can- 
non and German poison gases. 

And, alas, this typifies the European attitude I 
The continental countries seem to have learned 
little or nothing from their terrible experiences 
of the last five or six years. The diplomatists 
still speak and think in mediaeval, or at least 
what we consider antiquated terms. Alliances, 
balances of power, spheres of influence, — all the 
old terms crop up and the same selfish notions 
prevail. The Machiavellian code is still the 
handbook of European chancelleries. The re- 
cent treaties have certainly not improved the 
temper or brightened the prospects of Europe. 
The Versailles treaty may truly be called a 
double-edged sword. It was forged by old 
Clemenceau, the hardness of its steel having 

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been tempered to a small degree by Wilsonian 
alloy. France has in it obtained a weapon which 
alone she is unable to handle. As I have said, 
in order to enforce the treaty, France must find 
alliances. But where? The present French 
policy seems to be based entirely upon the neces- 
sity of finding help somehow from somewhere. 
In order to secure military and economic allies 
she has given encouragement to some of the 
smaller nations in southeastern Europe, not 
only in their aspirations for independence but 
for selfish aggrandizement. On the other hand, 
the small nations make France's emergency 
their opportunity. France also embarks in 
perilous warlike adventures, as for instance 
when, in order to weaken Soviet Russia, she 
turned to the reactionary and now thoroughly 
beaten Wrangel and helped him to continue his 
fight against Russia; while she encouraged and 
assisted Poland when all the other powers stood 
aloof for the wisest and best of reasons. 

Everywhere, indeed, one finds proofs that 

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the European nations have learned but little, 
if we are to judge from the actions of their rep- 
resentative statesmen, with a few notable ex- 
ceptions. The Poles, having for more than a 
century suffered from the woes of a foreign and 
divided rule, at length find themselves united, 
only to forget all the lessons of the past, and are 
willing and anxious to extend their rule to ter- 
ritory to which they have no valid claim, and 
in which their people are in a decided minority. 
The Italian readiness to occupy the Tyrol and 
thus create another Irredenta is an illustration 
of the same deplorable tendency to forget or 
ignore the lessons of the past. 

As a fact the European continent politically 
is in as hopeless a position today as it was be- 
fore the war. The treaty of St. Germain has 
destroyed the old Empire of Austria-Hungary, 
and has substituted a territorial arrangement 
the wisdom of which is doubted even in France. 
Heterogeneous as the Empire of the Hapsburgs 
was, there were in it elements of stability which 

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one looks for in vain in the new arrangement, 
or rather disarrangement. The old regime pro- 
vided some sort of protection for Central and 
Western Europe against the discordant ele- 
ments of southeastern Europe. We have today 
in its place a series of small and acutely im- 
poverished states, created somehow to fit in 
with that famous and much abused formula of 
self-determination. The Balkan disease, which 
was fonnerly confined to the peninsula from 
which it took its name, has now spread to the 
borders of Germany, Switzerland and Italy. 
Of course the structure of the old Austrian 
Empire could not last, but it was not altogether 
without its merits, for the Austrians and Hun- 
garians at least recognized each other, while 
they permitted the Poles to participate in the 
government, at the same time sternly suppress- 
ing all other Slavic elements. But for a sem- 
blance of order something approaching chaos 
has been substituted. Many of the best minds 
in Europe think that a solution of the difficulty 

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would have been to set up a tripartite state, 
recognizing the three racial elements of the old 
Empire — the German, Hungarian and Slavic — 
on the basis of the Swiss Republic, in which 
Germans, French and Italians live peacefully 
and contentedly under one government. 

At the outbreak of the conflict in 1914 we 
were confidently told that it was going to be a 
war to end war, that the world could not pos- 
sibly permit a renewal of such an enormous 
sacrifice of blood and treasure, and that there 
would be a general disarmament of nations. 
What a sad disillusionment we have undergone 
since November, 1918 1 How pitifully we have 
been disappointed in the belief that war would 
be a homeopathic remedy for militarism ! The 
peace settlement has not given us disarmament 
except for the Central Powers. As to the Allies 
and the rest of the world, we get occasional 
vague promises of eventual disannament, when, 
as, and if the League of Nations may so de- 
cree. Meanwhile we see practically the whole 

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of Europe, outside Germany and Austria and 
their associates in the war, an armed camp, 
while nothing has been done in the United 
States, except to reduce the army to "normal" 
size. Britain and the United States not only 
maintain but talk of increasing their navies ; the 
Poles and Jugo-Slavs are creating new armies, 
and the other countries are at least maintaining 
their forces in statu quo. Allowing for the fact 
that because of the existing unsettlement the na- 
tions are maintaining their establishments with a 
view to the immediate future, it must still be 
admitted that the outlook is distinctly discour- 
aging. Wherever we look in Europe today we 
see merely the peace of exhaustion, and not 
the peace which arises from an honest desire to 
live on terms of amity and accord, one nation 
with another. You instinctively feel that 
whenever the nations recover their old-time 
strength they will again be ready to spring at 
each others' throats. 

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FI. The Prospect 

HAT then is the remedy for invalid 
Europe? We have been told by 
many advanced thinkers that the 
present bourgeois governments are quite inca- 
pable of establishing international relations 
which will make for better things, and there- 
fore that a reorganization on the basis of radi- 
cal internationalism is the one and only remedy. 
Such a clear thinker as Anatole France sees the 
only hope for the world in such a movement. 
We are willing to admit, and indeed we have 
endeavored to demonstrate, that the present 
governments still represent the old ideas. 
Nevertheless one must ask oneself with much 
misgiving whether radical governments would 
be likely to do much better than those which 
now exist, at least as far as international rela- 

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tions are concerned'? The Bolshevists and So- 
cialists of all countries are willing to fraternize 
at present, this being probably due to the fact 
that they are at this moment the exponents of 
a minority idea and organizers of a class war 
which compels adherents of the faith in each 
country to stick to each other. But as soon 
as the Socialists become the government of a 
country, and represent the national expression 
of the whole people, they fall apparently into 
the old errors of national assertiveness and ag- 
gressiveness. The best illustration of this is 
furnished by the recent history of Poland, 
where its President, Pilsudski, and its peasant 
premier, Witos, represent the Socialists. No 
country in recent times has offended more in the 
matter of imperialistic tendencies than this very 
Socialist government of Poland with respect to 
Russia, Lithuania and Ukrainia. 

The attack of Poland on Russia and the at- 
titude of the Bolsheviki toward Poland both 
prove that radical governments can give as 

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strong an expression to nationalism as their con- 
servative predecessors. We are likewise faced 
by the fact that the radical government of 
Czecho-Slovakia is ready to resort to arms 
against the Socialist government of Poland, on 
account of the frontier dispute in connection 
with Teschen. 

The roots of the disease obviously lie deeper 
than in forms of government, and it is hardly 
fair to lay all the blame at the doors of the 
bourgeoisie. The true fons et origo mali is to 
be found in old racial feuds, kept alive for cen- 
turies by recurring disputes over frontiers, com- 
mercial rivalries and ingrained antipathies. 
The last, and as many believe the supreme rem- 
edy for the European sick man is a League of 
Nations. I was rather disappointed when I was 
in Europe to find that the various peoples took 
so little interest in this matter. The fact is 
that the European is so thoroughly used to the 
settlement of international questions through 
old-fashioned diplomatic methods, and failing 

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these by the sword, that a movement which 
seeks to abolish both, and to apply open nego- 
tiation, fair dealing and even-handed justice to 
the larger affairs of nations seems like a Utopian 
dream. What a difference from the attitude 
of the United States I When I returned here 
last September I found the man in the street 
discussing the pros and cons of the League of 
Nations with the most intense interest; it was 
the principal topic of the political campaign, 
and practically every American was in favor of 
some sort of international arrangement to pre- 
vent war. I felt that I was truly in a new 
world. It proved to me, if proof were neces- 
sary, that my fellow countrymen were not the 
gross materialists they are so often depicted as 
being by the European press, but that rather are 
we a nation of idealists. 

It is unreasonable to expect that wars will 
automatically cease just because a League of 
Nations comes into existence. The institution 
of tribunals and courts of law has not elimi- 

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nated crime, but they tend greatly to diminish 
it by punishing the criminal; and by inspiring 
a spirit of wholesome fear of consequences on 
the one hand, and by attempting reform on the 
other mankind is led to a better life. The es- 
tablishment of a League of Nations should have 
similar results. It would seek to prevent and 
control recalcitrant and outlaw nations which 
prefer taking up the sword to taking counsel one 
with another; and, partly by means of repres- 
sion, economic and otherwise, and partly 
through education it would lead the nations to 
apply in their dealings with each other the code 
of ethics which actuates individuals in civilized 
life. An agreement to enforce peace through 
an association of nations represents the great 
ideal of the world, and it would be a culmina- 
tion and realization of the Christian idea, peace 
on earth and good will towards men. 

It is not only a necessity, but the most logi- 
cal step in the evolution of human society. The 
development of the spirit of human gregarious- 

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Invalid Europe 

ness has led from smaller to larger complexes. 
The savage, living in the woods and knowing 
none but his mate and offspring, was driven by 
the dangers surrounding him into the formation 
of villages, which again developed into tribes, 
from which still larger aggregates were formed, 
such as counties, duchies, kingdoms, and the 
modem state or nation. At each development 
of a larger sociological organization doubtless 
the same arguments against progress were ad- 
vanced by the conservatives of their time. The 
nobles of the middle ages resisted with all the 
power they could muster the formation of the 
larger states as tending to diminish their own 
power and authority. The whole of European 
mediaeval history is taken up with the resistance 
offered by the feudal lords to the central power 
which represented the larger sociological unit. 
And now we find nations opposing the idea of 
yielding to a League a small part of their free- 
dom of action. 

Some years ago, when reading one of the 

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books of General von Bemhardi, perhaps the 
most outspoken apostle of German militarism, 
I was amused and shocked by the argument that 
the State was responsible only to itself, denying 
the possibility of anything ever controlling the 
State. What a strange idea to be entertained by 
a thinking person — that anything on this earth 
of human device has reached a final state of 
evolution in which not only amendment but 
criticism is inadmissible and out of the question ! 
Apart from the disappointment and disillusion- 
ment which Bemhardi must have suffered as the 
result of the late war and the overthrow of 
Hohenzollernism, he should have learned that 
there is something much higher than the State, 
and that is the moral idea of humanity, which 
idea must in the end control the actions of the 
State. This moral idea, in order that it may be 
exercised efficiently, should find concrete ex- 
pression in a contract between nations, just as 
the State has been slowly established by a series 
of agreements on the part of the individuals 

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Invalid Europe 

constituting it. If the conduct of nations in the 
future is to be regulated for the common good 
of the world, it can only be by binding agree- 
ments. 

The liberal thought of the world, and of 
America particularly, greeted the idea of a 
League of Nations with the utmost enthusiasm. 
It was regarded as the only worthwhile result 
of the terrible war. It offered to a suffering 
humanity the hope of things better than the 
world had ever known. Europe itself cannot 
possibly go on without some sort of a league. 
The map of the continent has been greatly 
changed by recent events and treaties. Large 
areas of the old Russian and Austrian empires 
have been divided into smaller units, many of 
them on a lower plane of civilization than the 
former nations as a whole, and some sort of a 
power outside must be formed which will be 
able to control their more dubious activities. 
Otherwise we shall have once more a Europe 
harrassed by a continual series of wars between 

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the little states, with the ultimate danger of 
larger ones being involved. The most con- 
firmed reactionary would, I imagine, scarcely 
wish to see a return to the old and hopelessly 
discredited system of a balance of powers 
through alliances, or so-called European con- 
certs, whose performances in the past were the 
reverse of harmonious. An association of na- 
tions based on broad lines of international eth- 
ics is urgently needed in Europe, not only to 
protect but to control the smaller states and to 
prevent the larger ones from ultimately flying 
at each others' throats. 

We now approach the questions which most 
concerns ourselves — What is America to do in 
this business — for we are in it and cannot get 
out of it — what is our duty to progress and civi- 
lization, and also what is our duty as regards 
the protection of our own intersts^ 

There is an almost unanimous sentiment in 
America in favor of our entering some form of 
a League. This admits of no doubt, the recent 

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Presidential election notwithstanding. The 
Democratic candidate, influenced by the Presi- 
dent, attempted to make the League of Nations 
the main issue of the campaign. He failed, 
however, to do so, owing to the fact that the 
Republican party as a whole refused to accept 
this issue. The result of the election can in no 
way be construed as an expression by the Ameri- 
can electorate of its desire not to become a party 
to an international agreement of some sort, 
whether it be a League or Society of Nations, 
or whatever other terminology you may wish 
to employ, looking toward the prevention of 
war. 

That, on the other hand, a large majority of 
the people of the United States is opposed to 
the League as contained in the treaty of Ver- 
sailles is equally indubitable. The political 
discussions of the subject in the Senate and 
public forum have unfortunately become ob- 
scured by the fact that Mr. Wilson, in refusing 
the assistance of the majority party, evoked a 



Invalid Europe 

feeling of passionate partisanship, which pre- 
vented unprejudiced consideration of the ques- 
tions relating to a revision of the League of 
Nations as it stands. To our mind the greatest 
objections to that League are the undemocratic 
character of its constitution, and the fact that 
it is tacked on to an objectionable treaty and is 
designed to guarantee that treaty's enforcement. 
The League of Nations as constituted by the 
Treaties is really an old-fashioned alliance be- 
tween the five major powers, who hold a major- 
ity vote in the council of the League. America 
can render good service to the world if it con- 
ditions its entry into the League on a modifica- 
tion of its constitution which will lift it into the 
realms of a real society of nations, in which the 
smaller states can enter without fear of domina- 
tion by the larger ones. Thus only can the 
League secure the confidence of the world and 
develop into a mighty instrument for good. 
The main objection, however, to it is the fact 
that it has been inextricably bound up with a 

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Treaty, the signatories of which are to all in- 
tents guarantors of the territorial arrangements 
of that Treaty, the folly and injustice of some 
of which are becoming every day increasingly 
obvious. Shantung, the Tyrol and the Saar are 
surely sufficient reasons for America's holding 
aloof, and from refusing to underwrite such dis- 
astrous arrangements I 

But the Treaty, however faulty it may be, 
is an actuality; it has been ratified by most of 
the European nations and Japan, and it is the 
present groundwork of European reconstruc- 
tion. No matter how much we may deplore 
the result of Mr. Wilson's efforts, we are con- 
fronted — to quote the words of one of our great 
presidents — with a condition and not a theory. 
The world needs peace, every other considera- 
tion must at present cede to that pressing fact. 
America is the only outstanding nation which 
is still technically at war with the Central Pow- 
ers, and haste should be made to do away with 
this anomalous and ridiculous state of affairs. 

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Invalid Europe 

But America's acceptance of the Treaty plus the 
League should be rigidly qualified in such man- 
ner as not to impose, even by implication, upon 
her a contingent liability as guarantor of the 
status quo established by the Treaty. 

Anyone who has been in Europe during the 
present year must feel convinced that it would 
be a mistake, if not a crime, to bind ourselves 
to participate in conflicts with which we have 
no concern. This country can render much 
greater service to the world by keeping aloof 
from distinctly European quarrels and using its 
material and moral influence as and when its 
sense of justice and right dictates. Article X, 
so far as America is concerned, may, after our 
last election, be considered as an academic ques- 
tion. No decision of the American electorate 
was ever wiser, although the road by which the 
decision was reached may be considered as 
rather dubious. When the League of Nations 
is no longer in danger of being used to enforce 
inequitable and unwise provisions, then event- 

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Invalid Europe 

ually some arrangement may be reached which 
will impose upon the nations an obligation 
somewhat similar to the rejected article. 

The history of human society and political 
life is the surrender of unbridled action in some 
form or another. The very idea of law is the 
circumscription of the right of the individual to 
do as he pleases, and the acceptance of a modi- 
fied form of human conduct which differentiates 
license from liberty. Each time that the indi- 
vidual's right to do as it pleases him is further 
circumscribed a distinct chafing at the new form 
of restraint becomes obvious. The best as well 
as most recent instance of this is to be found in 
the plaints of the victims of prohibition. States 
are similarly affronted and annoyed by the cir- 
cumscription of their freedom of action. Again, 
the best illustration of this may be found in the 
history of our own country, when for decades 
the southern states resisted what they regarded 
as an infringement of their own sovereign 
rights. 

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Invalid Europe 

Eventually, however, a way must and will be 
found to give a League of Nations the power 
essential for the enforcement of its decisions. 
But in such a matter it would be best to proceed 
with caution, and this step, as far as America 
is concerned, lies in the future. 

The English-speaking peoples have a great 
and solemn duty before them. Of all the na- 
tions representing western civilization they are 
the only ones which have emerged from the re- 
cent terrible conflict with their vigor compara- 
tively unimpaired. The continental countries 
have suffered such serious physical damage, 
such terrible losses of man power, and such 
enormous economic disasters, with subsequent 
distress and disorganization, that for at least 
a generation to come their efforts must be di- 
rected mainly to their own physical and finan- 
cial restoration. An invalid who is confined to 
his own chamber, enduring physical pain and 
great weakness, can hardly be expected to take 
an active, altruistic interest in what is going 

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Invalid Europe 

on outside. He is mainly preoccupied by the 
thought of getting well. 

The condition of continental Europe may 
well be compared with that of a man in a sick 
chamber — an invalid. It is unreasonable to ex- 
pect a manifestation of active interest in ex- 
traneous affairs and in the great ideals of hu- 
manity from nations which are engaged in a 
painful struggle for existence and survival. 
The English-speaking races, on the other hand, 
are still strong and hearty. Their position in 
the world is sound and secure. Together they 
should and must take the lead in the movement 
which makes for the betterment and permanent 
happiness and accord of the human race. The 
future paths of the two great divisions of 
Anglo-Saxon civilization lie parallel with each 
other, and there is no reason why they should 
ever cross. One cannot expect two great peo- 
ples to agree on every conceivable point. Mem- 
bers of the same family are rarely unanimous. 
Brothers and sisters have their petty quarrels 

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Invalid Europe 

* 

and disagreements, but, unless they are very 
unkind or ill-conditioned folk, those disagree- 
ments rarely become violent. Nations, repre- 
senting vastly larger interests, must necessarily 
be faced on occasions by divergencies. But the 
attitude of one towards the other can and 
should be, in the main, one of cooperation as 
well as, now and then, friendly criticism. 

From the American point of view there are 
various questions on which many of our citizens 
differ widely from the British viewpoint. It is 
hardly necessary to state that almost all Ameri- 
cans sympathize keenly with the Irish, and de- 
plore the failure of the British Government to 
effect a settlement of the Irish question. How- 
ever, we should be fair enough to recognize the 
immense difficulties which underlie that ques- 
tion, and the undoubted desire of the British 
public, as well as of many of the ruling classes 
of the country, to find some solution which not 
only will satisfy the widely divergent sections 
of the Irish population, but will also safeguard 

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Invalid Europe 

the interests of England, which might otherwise 
be gravely jeopardized. Our great republic can 
keenly sympathize with the legitimate aspira- 
tions of the Irish, and still cooperate with the 
great friendly power to whose wisdom and fair- 
ness we can trust for the ultimate solution of 
this difficult problem. 

If we plead for Britain and America to stand 
together as joint leaders in the forward march 
of humanity, we do so in no spirit of imperial- 
ism or vainglory, or from any overweening sense 
of superiority over other nations, which was the 
motive of all the braggings of pan-Germanism; 
but because we believe that Anglo-Saxon civi- 
lization, having emerged from the war as the 
strongest factor in the future of the western 
world, with comparatively little physical or 
moral loss, should contribute its very best for 
the benefit of the human race now and in the 
days to come. Its present duty is to do every- 
thing in its power to hasten the day when na- 
tions will no longer be willing to resort to the 

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settlement of their differences and disputes by 
force of arms, but will gather together in peace- 
ful council for the adjustment of disagreements, 
with, in the last resort, an international tribunal 
able and enlightened enough to render just de- 
cisions, and, if necessary, strong enough to en- 
force them. 



THE END 



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